Asherons Call: Biting the Hand #45

I See in My Crystal Ball... by Jessica Mulligan

If you've never read Biting the Hand, it's a bit of a treat. It's written buy Jessica Mulligan, a long-time game producer and MMO executive. In fact, she's currently Executive Producer of AC2 (no, Troop isn't gone, she works with him).

Today's edition is quite interesting in that it talks about how game developers keep "shooting for the moon and landing in Pittsburg" with unrealistic expectations of what can be done with a persistant world. One of her more interesting points (and we all understand this) is that for future games to succeed, it's going to require better customer service:

[I]Right now, the industry has fooled itself into believing that pretty pictures and lots of marketing buzz make a great online game, as long as you view the pictures with your pals. Few subscriptions games perform adequate customer service, player relations or community relations because it's, you know, expensive and stuff. With a couple exceptions, what little of it we get is based on the failed notion that form email responses, 45 minute-plus response times to issues that prevent game play and bottom tier service by people who don't speak the language and live 10,000 miles away is good enough for games that feature notorious problems that often require real-time, one-on-one contact to fix. And still analysts, publishers and pundits scratch their heads and wonder why even relatively few hard core gamers want to cough up $12.95 per month to play.[/i]

It's well-worth the read if for no other reason than to see that at least one game developer "gets it". Now, if it can be put in action....