A Thought About Game Design

I was having a conversation with a friend last night about the current state of MMORPG design, and it got me to thinking. Why is it that we, the gamers, can look at a game and quickly list a host of things that we think would be cool to include, but we never see those things in games? Of course, my friend fell back on the "We pay these people tons of money in monthly fees, so they can afford to do this," argument.

Now, I don't discount that there is some truth in that statement. After all, if you use World of Warcraft as an example, Blizzard is raking in cash. Use 10 million accounts (although I believe the most recent number was 12 million) and the 6 month price of $12.95 a month as a baseline, and you see that they're pulling in $130 million a month, and over a billion a year. That's real money, no doubt.

But where does that money go? There are a lot of costs that the average gamer never contemplates. For example, not only is there the game design staff (coders, artists, modelers, etc..), but there is also customer support staff, billing staff, tech support, and server maintenance, just to name a few. There's also the cost of an astronomical amount of redundant hardware. Most importantly, the bandwidth cost for a game like World of Warcraft must be quite staggering. All of these factors enter into the budget that determines how much is left over for game improvement.

I'm sure that there are people at Blizzard and other MMO developers that have the same ideas that we all do when they look at their game. I'm sure they propose those ideas to their superiors. I'm also sure that in many cases, they hear the response that this or that feature simply isn't economically viable. By that, I mean that the cost of implementing said feature is not justified by a perceptible return.

One thing we as gamers need to keep foremost in our minds is that game design is a business. It's not that the people who do it don't love it, or don't have a passion for it, but to continue doing it they must be profitable. Not only that, but their concepts and projects are most often approved by a management staff that weighs every penny involved before committing to anything.

This is one reason why we see so many sequels to successful games, and why original IP's are now as hard to find as a pizza at a Weight Watcher's convention. The cost of designing a game in today's market has risen to a point where companies are understandably hesitant about throwing massive funding behind an unproven concept. They are much more likely to fund smaller projects that entail less risk, and reserve their massive spending for the Call of Duty title. (To be fair, I love CoD, but it's a great example of a franchise that may live on in perpetuity)

We as gamers perpetuate this ideal. How? We howl for the next big graphics improvement, or the latest in multiplayer tech, or the newest thing in physics engines. We elevate game we like to near mythical status, and we vilify those we don't. Our purchasing power, combined with the power of the internet to allow our opinions to affect sales (I'm looking at you, Spore), make gamers more powerful than they sometimes realize.

So, how do we remedy this? In truth, we can't; at least not completely. The culture is what it is, and it's very rare for something to take a step backwards. However, support for more new IP's, more smaller developers, and more games not found in the mainstream can definitely help mitigate it somewhat.

Maybe, just maybe, we'll see the original IP begin to shine again. Let's hope so. In the meantime, the next time you feel the urge to refer to a game developer as 'out of touch' or to say that they aren't 'real gamers,' think twice before you make that statement. Chances are, you'd be right at home with those folks if you ever sat down with them.