Ask Massively: You make the call

For those of you who read Ask Massively but don't pay much attention to the comments, you might want to go back and check out the comments section from last week. I think there might be 3 or 4 columns worth of material there.

At issue is the concept of software quality vs. time to market. Many software companies, OK... the vast majority... no... OK... everyone but Blizzard seems to value the idea of getting to market quickly in order to take advantage of market conditions in order to maximize sales. Age of Conan, for example, sold 700,000 units in it's first month of release. That's a success for any game, but especially for an MMO. Blizzard, on the other hand... Well, we don't need to cite that figure again as it has likely increased in the time it took me to type this.

So instead of answering your questions, I'm going to ask one of my own.

If you were the head of a software development company which elements of a software release are most important to you, and why?

1) Do you value quality above all other considerations? Are you the type of developer that thinks "This product will not ship with my name on it unless it is the absolute best I can make it?"

2) Is "time to market" most important to you? Do you have the attitude "Let's ship it now so that we can maximize initial sales and patch any issues we discover?"

3) Is cost the most important factor to you? Do you think "Sure, I'd like to keep this in house for another 6-8 months, but it would be too expensive to do that. We'll have to take our chances and ship now in order to save money."

Before you snap off an answer to that question, I'd like you all to take a look at the risks and benefits associated with each approach as I give you examples of each of these types of software products, some that have done well in the market place, and some that have failed miserably.

Before we get too far into this, I'd like to say a word or two about World of Warcraft. At an estimated cost of between 60 and 80 million dollars, it was not an inexpensive game to develop. At 5 years, it wasn't developed fairly quickly. I am also reasonably confident that most sane people would agree that it is a very stable and polished product that has been undergoing constant improvement since day 1. In short, it is the exception that proves all of the rules which are about to follow. I am not going to attempt to identify the reasons why particular decisions were made, I am just going to identify the results of those choices as best I can.

Of the options that I have presented to you, let us first identify the risks of a "quality at any cost" approach. Aside from WoW, which is a sterling example of how this approach works when it is successful, what other games spent the time and money to put out the best possible product, and how well did that approach work for them?

One example that could be termed as a failure in this category is Tabula Rasa. At 6 years and 100 million dollars, it took more time and cost more money than everyone's favorite game from Blizzard. The game went through 3 complete re-design phases in order to get things "just right" for release. It has Richard Garriott's name tattooed all over it. It has a company backing it, in NCsoft, that has released some of the most popular MMOs in the genre. However, the game has less than 100,000 subscribers and doesn't appear to be catching on in the marketplace. Some estimates indicate that the game would have to maintain current subscriber levels for as many as 7 years in order to break even.

If we assume that some game producers are unable or unwilling to accept the risk of investing 6 years and 100 million into a product, what other options do they have and how well do they work? That brings us to our second approach to software development. "Ship it now and patch it as much as we need to."

One of the more successful titles in this category is EVE Online. Released in 2003 after only a couple of years of development (I am making an assumption here since the earliest announcement that I can find about the game is from 2002.), the game has undergone many patches and changes since it's initial release. From graphics overhauls to complete changes in gameplay, CCP developed the game relatively quickly and cheaply and trusted their development team to respond to the needs of their players. It doesn't have a player base as large as some other games, but the game has shown steady growth and maturity over the last 5 years.

Of course there is a flip side to this argument. It's called "Earth and Beyond" Despite a small and fanatical player base, the game was not profitable and EA chose to pull the plug in 2004 only 2 years after the initial release. EA chose to cut their losses rather than spend the time and money required to polish the game after release.

So what else is there?

Well, there is the option that the vast majority of software development companies typically choose. "Sure, I'd like to keep this in house for another 6-8 months, but it would be too expensive to do that. We'll have to take our chances and ship now in order to save money." Age of Conan falls into this category, as well as games like Pirates of the Burning Sea. In last week's Ask Massively, I mentioned the upside to this philosophy. You can sell a lot of copies and get folks in the door, then focus on customer retention. It is always cheaper in business to keep an existing customer than it is to go get a new one. Take advantage of market conditions then trust your developers to squash bugs when the pop up. The downside, as was mentioned several times in the comments from last week, is that in the MMO industry, reputation is everything. A game that starts with a bad first impression has a very hard time becoming successful in the long term. Shipping early is a calculated risk that you can keep your players engaged and happy while you fix bugs. If you pull it off, you become Everquest. If you fail, you become Vanguard.

So the question remains. Do you give your game unlimited development time and budget and increase the risks and rewards of producing your game? Or do you mitigate that risk, accepting a lower return on your investment in exchange for lower risk? What would you do?

That's all we have for Ask Massively this week. I look forward to reading your comments and I'll do my best to respond. I'm currently working on the MMORPG programming for Dragon*Con this year, so I might be a little slow in getting back to you. You can also use our tip line or send comments to ask AT massively DOT com.