The epic demise of Realtime Worlds, maker of Crackdown & APB
escapistmagazine.comI think they're still confused. They think the 'smaller team' was what made Crackdown better, and in reality was 'better team'. Size wasn't relevant, only the people were. They admit later they had people who enjoyed making a great game, and others who relished the politics. The latter is what destroyed them.
"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."
(http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail40...)
The story will resonate with anyone who is familiar with "The Mythical Man-Month", but what I particularly interesting about this story is the stark contrast between the company's initial success with Crackdown and then how quickly it screwed it all up with APB.
Beware of the dreaded Second System Effect?
Related: Luke Halliwell's Weblog, http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/ (Found via: Ex-Realtime Worlds Employee Examines APB Fiasco, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103563-Ex-Realtime... )
Off-topic but important to note: Dundee is not a "small Scottish town" but is a medium-sized city in the UK, the fourth-largest in Scotland:
Moral of this story would be: do not rush to launch with a minimal viable product if you're working on an MMO (or probably any console game).
As I understood it, the APB that launched was far, far beyond an MVP. It was the game equivalent of a deep-feature-set, enterprise-class product launch that simply hadn't been well-architected.
In APB's case, it likely would have been vastly preferable to launch with an MVP two or three years ago, the minimum viable product of APB being a game that's low on content but high on playability. Just as with non-game software, they should have concentrated on user experience first, with a small feature set, and have launched something that left the audience hungry for more, rather than deluging the player with content that isn't fun to play.
You gain a gaming audience's trust much faster promising that a fun and short game will get longer than promising that a long and un-fun game will get funner.
The real moral is not to release a shitty product. APB was a terrible product, marketing and all the other stuff aside, it just plain sucked.
"Minimal viable product" is context sensitive and dependent on competition. A hunk of sharp flint lashed to a stick might be a good minimal viable product in the ax market in 15,000 BC, but it's not today. The MMO space is filled with quite a lot of very robust, very polished competitors. To compete you either need to match that level of production quality or have a unique experience that is compelling enough to make up for it.
Well, that strategy seems to have worked for EVE Online. On the other hand, that's the only MMO I can think of that started small and kept growing successfully.
APB was a good game with a lot of potential but it was plagued by two issues. The first being a total lack of variety in regard to story content and the second being that the matchmaking system was horrible. When playing that game I was constantly paired up against people who were a much higher level effectively doing the same mission I had done a bunch of times already.
Or perhaps, don't launch with a minimal viable product with plans to improve it later unless you have a financial structure that allows you to stay in business for long enough to actually improve it.
I can't help but feel the bad reviews caused irreparable damage. Even if they'd had a few more months to tweak it, I doubt they would have attracted many gamers. It's not the first rushed but promising game I've seen sink on launch (see: True Crime NY). Big budget games are a somewhat different category than (business) (web)apps.
Bad reviews are often symptoms and not causes, but I agree with you here. When you're selling a new MMO to consumers, you need to keep in mind that customer trial costs are high, especially for hardcore early adopters. These are people with lots of time and money sunk into their current "solutions," and they're only going to try a new one if it seems like a sure thing. Reviews and pre-release buzz are thus critical. Especially significant is that a good aggregate review scorecard doesn't necessarily make your product, but a bad one can certainly break it.
To be clear, you're saying to avoid rushing to your Launch (marketing, press, boxes on shelves, etc), right, not to avoid showing it to customers?
Well that's what Realtime Worlds did, they showed the game, it got a lot of buzz, so they pushed its release date forward (or refrained from delaying to fix the bugs), released it, but it flopped. So yes it's the Launch bit they screwed up.
At first it struck me as contrary to the 'just get your version 1.0 out there no matter how embarrassing it is' wisdom, but I suppose on reflection it's not really.
There's a saying in MMOs, "You can't patch first impressions". It is kind of contrary to "just get it out there", but maybe not if you consider press coverage rather than shipping "getting it out there".