Surprisingly, many of the more high-profile MMO failures were developed by the largest, most well established publishers in the industry. These projects had the benefit of solid financing, large teams, established IPs, and proven development methodologies that had been refined over decades of developing successful games in
other genres. What happened? You can certainly make a list of everything that went wrong ¨C the game industry is full of "armchair generals" who would love to do so for you ¨C but ultimately the quality of a game is determined by the development culture that created it,
and creating a successful MMO requires a radically different development culture than the culture optimized to produce traditional video games. While these large publishers have refined the process of creating traditional video games to an art, many of them have not yet realized that an
MMO requires a completely different development process, and a studio culture to compliment that process.
The defining characteristic of top MMO development teams is their awareness that they are delivering a service, rather than creating a product, and that release day is the beginning of a long-term relationship with their customers, rather than the end of the project. Traditionally, release day is the time to go home, repair your relationship with your spouse or significant other, and sleep for a few days, but the weeks and months following the release of an MMO are the most critical
point of your development cycle. It's the time to make it clear to your customers that you will stand by your game, and that their trust in you as the developer will be rewarded. Regardless of your business model, you are asking players to invest hundreds or thousands of hours playing your game, and you need to demonstrate that you are committed to protecting the economy, quickly fixing bugs and exploits, and adding live content. If the entire development team is recovering at the beach in those first critical weeks, you will be unable to demonstrate your willingness and ability to support your game, and your players will be hesitant to invest their time and money with you.
The message is clear: avoid the Big Crunch. I'm not saying that we should expect to work 8-hour days in the weeks leading up to release, but we
certainly can't work 16-hour days for six months before release and then expect to sustain that pace over the several-year lifespan of a successful MMO. If you are planning for success, you have to build a sustainable work culture, and you need to establish that culture
before release. The work load will not decrease after launch ¨C if anything, it will increase, so build a sustainable work culture and stand by it. It's not just a morale issue ¨C it will have a critical impact on the success or failure of your business.
Article Source:www.guildwars.com.
