Developing Online Games: An Insider’s Guide

Developing Online Games is at first glance a walkthrough on the process of project management, for those interested in diving into the blossoming online gaming market, specifically, the care and feeding of "persistent worlds" (PW's). Not a decision to be made lightly, it seems.

"For all the excitement surrounding PW games and the semi-mystical properties they supposedly have for creating revenue, not everyone should necessarily get involved in all the market channels, or even in the overall market. These games take more commitment in money, people, and CS than the standard "fire and forget" retail unit; if you aren't prepared to make that commitment, why risk making a meteoric fall?

If you're still interested, then you need to understand the basic differences between the markets, which are covered in more detail later. Here's the big difference, however: a PW isn't just a game; it is also a service.

The authors focus on common mistakes that are made, and the recommended best practices to avoid them during the game development cycle and post-launch. They do this in a casual, conversational style that one can only wish college textbooks were written in. And while the intricacies of the development cycle of a persistent world may sound like a topic of limited interest, it is presented in such a way as to engage almost anybody involved in online gaming. Including, and especially, the players of these games.

I approached this book as a customer. After all, the customers who "live" in a persistent world have a highly vested interest in what goes on behind the scenes and the factors which will control the fate of their alter-ego and that world. Even the frustrating triangle between publishers, developers, and the release dates that love them takes on new interest when you put it in the context of the missing features your favorite online game was promised to ship with and didn't. A good number of tomorrow's PW game developers will come from the pool of today's PW game players. This probably happens in part because of the intense interest and desire for details that online PW players tend to have.

"What the players want to know is: What is broken, what is being fixed, and what cool, new stuff will be added, and when? They want to get inside the heads of the live development team and understand what they are thinking and planning, so they can plan their own in-game time and strategies accordingly. In other words, they want to feel like they are part of the process."

Developing Online Games contains a wealth of industry information to dig in to. Statistics and data are included both throughout the book and as appendices. The reader will learn everything from how shelf space is divvied up in a retail store (trivia: what does SKU actually stand for?) to where the player's monthly fee goes. What is the Bartle Quotient Survey, how do you as a player score on it, and where does your playstyle fall compared to the norm and the average playstyle of your favorite online persistent world? This is the sort of data that PW players will likely find interesting.

Anecdotes from actual situations are used to illustrate good and bad practices with their consequences, and anybody who plays online games will soon be nodding to themselves and recognizing certain situations from the consumer side. These anecdotes, paired with a very impressive Online World Timeline section, provide a good picture of the history of this genre. The history of online gaming is interesting because most of us were there. We know mistakes were made because we fell victim to the results. We know when things went right, too, from a qualitative perspective. The missing pieces of "why" can be found here.

In addition to quotes throughout the book from veterans like Richard Garriott (creator of Ultima Online), there is also an entire section of supporting articles written about specific games and common PW issues. This section is perhaps the most interesting from a consumer standpoint, as the cases are real, the participants not actors. Many readers will already be familiar with the topics included here, from the "Anarchy Online Post-Mortem" (a Funcom history that could be a book in itself) to thoughts on fighting player burnout and a humorous look at the Meridian 59 timeline. The inclusion of these articles lends a great deal of credence to the advice and points the authors are trying to make, but also provides fascinating background information for the player.

Shareholders in the Stock Market like to know the details about their investments, and in the realm of persistent worlds, the players are the shareholders. It turns out our beautiful fantasy worlds are ultimately prey to the same mundane rules and cold economics as the real world is. But by taking us behind the curtain, Developing Online Games gives gamers both an interesting history on an emerging entertainment medium that we ourselves help to shape, and a view from the other side of the fence on what it's like to deal with us.