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EVE Vegas 2014: Getting players involved in EVE's development
Back in 2011, EVE Online developer CCP Games was rocked by controversy when players outraged over the Incarna expansion's microtransactions and CCP's indifference to player feedback spoke with their wallets and quit the game. In what became known as the monoclegate scandal, an estimated 8% of players quit, and CCP eventually laid off 20% of its staff worldwide. Some tough lessons were learned about keeping players looped into the development process, and CCP began involving players more closely in the development process. At EVE Vegas 2014 today, developer CCP Fozzie looked at the ways that CCP gathers ideas and feedback from the community. As a sandbox MMO with a very dedicated community, EVE is in the interesting position that many of the players know more about the game than the developers themselves and can identify problems with ideas very early in the development process. Plans are now announced earlier in development to gather feedback, some new features are now made optional on release to gauge usage, and failed ideas will even be rolled back if necessary. During the talk, Fozzie confirmed that each SCRUM team within CCP focuses on one particular area of gameplay and that player ideas are often brought into internal meetings for discussion. A new rig named the Higgs Anchor is even being introduced based on player suggestions; it will decrease movement speed by 75% but increase agility to make it easier to align to warp out if hostiles approach the player's location. If this level of player participation keeps up, hopefully disasters like monoclegate will never happen again.
Darkfall dev diary talks new UI, quest content, and more
Aventurine's Tasos Flambouras returns with another activity report on the Darkfall Epic Blog, and the focus is fairly broad. He touches on the dynamic quests and lore-driven events we mentioned last week, as well as upcoming world optimizations that include aggressive wildlife based on location and time of day, new monster families and epic mob encounters, and improvements to both player character models and monster animations. Those of you who haven't been able to get past Darkfall's unique user interface will also have reason to give the game a second look in the near future, as Flambouras states that Aventurine has decided on a new GUI framework and tools. "These should yield a vastly improved user interface. The next phase for the GUI is the architecture and adapting the current GUI functionality to the new framework," he says. Other notable items include the mention of a completely new environmental sound system as well as an in-game political map which will feature clan associations, vendor and bank locations, and various other resources. Check out all the details on the official Darkfall blog.
Darkfall highlights dev team tasks, PvP tips contest
Are you curious about Darkfall but put off by the fact that the open-world sandbox title focuses on PvP? Fear not, as Aventurine is taking steps to make the world of Agon more accessible to a wider range of players. In addition to the recent PvE-focused Hellfreeze expansion, the Greek development firm is also sponsoring a contest designed to impart veteran PvP wisdom to newer players. If you've got PvP tips you don't mind sharing, submit them in the comment section of the contest blog post, and you could be one of five winners who will receive rare in-game ingots and an exclusive forum title. In other Darkfall news, Tasos Flambouras has given us a peek behind the curtain of the game's development schedule, courtesy of another blog post that outlines both the team work groups and their respective responsibilities over the next few weeks. Aventurine's staffers are currently split into 11 teams, all working to grow the game in terms of UI updates, server tools, offline skilling, and various other game mechanics. Flambouras' posting is an interesting look at a Scrum-based software development cycle, and you can check it out on the official website.
Brutal Legend postmortem: Scrum, content explosion and lawsuit drama
It's been a bumpy road to release for Brütal Legend. Tim Schafer's had to change publishers, deal with a pesky lawsuit, soldier through PR missteps and even handle some post-release DLC. This is all common knowledge, but in a lengthy postmortem at Gamasutra, Caroline Esmurdoc, executive producer at Double Fine, goes in depth on the development strategy for the title and talks about what went right and what went wrong in the creation of this rock gaming opus. Double Fine adopted the Scrum method of agile software development for Brütal Legend, which allowed the company to create a renderer, terrain and a playable Eddie Riggs for Tim in a mere month. Content creation was fairly steady, Esmurdoc admitted, but around January of this year, the game's content jumped from the 2.5GB generated over three years to a massive 9GB, thanks to multiple teams unloading assets for the game simultaneously. Esmurdoc also touched on the lawsuit, though she couldn't go into specifics beyond mentioning that the transition between publishers caused "internal unrest and morale dips among the team", and that Double Fine learned Activision would not be publishing Brutal Legend when the game was suspiciously absent from a list of the publisher's upcoming games. Double Fine then pursued a new publishing partner.
EVE dev blog explains new ship fitting screen, saveable configurations
Among the changes that will come to EVE Online with the March Apocrypha expansion is the user interface for fitting ships, and this is the topic of the latest dev blog from CCP Fendahl. Critics of the game's user interface might be surprised to learn that there is a team that focuses solely on UI, and it seems they've been quite busy with this radical layout change. Ship fitting in Apocrypha will be focused on an iPod-like ring where you array your modules and rigs, as well as subsystems for Tech III ships, while viewing your ship (and how it changes) in the center. This large fitting reticle is flanked by collapsible side panels which are used for item selection and displaying ship stats. Browsing the hundreds (in some cases thousands) of items in the various division hangars in a given station should be easier, with collapsible sections in the left side item panel. The stats panel to the right actually provides more info about your ship setup than before, by mousing over and bringing up a pop-up box. CCP Fendahl addresses the fact that this is more complex than the previous system: "While this increases the barrier to entry when learning how to fit a ship for the first time, we also think that the fitting screen is a critically important interface that needs to show all the relevant numbers."
An inside look at the DC Universe Online studio
The latest bit of info about the upcoming game DC Universe Online comes to us through a video walk-through of the developers' own Hall of Justice. Michael Daubert, Studio Art Director for DC Universe Online, blogs on Myspace about what it's like to work on the game in the setting they've created.It's a place where every Friday is "Green Lantern Friday" when studio employees either wear GL's requisite green or Sinestro yellow. Monday is "Batman Monday"-- we think you get the picture. But having Wednesdays devoted to Aquaman... dubious. One pictures employees bringing their goldfish to work and willing them to perform office tasks. One tradeoff for having to dress in orange and green is that employees at the Austin studio are surrounded by artwork for DC Universe Online from Jim Lee and the Wildstorm Productions studio. The video gives us a glimpse at the roughly 1200 pieces of concept art Lee and his team have produced that literally wallpaper the studio. Plus you get to meet some of the dev team as Daubert alternately attempts to stay awake through Scrum explanations or avoid tirades from his colleagues. Unfortunately we can't embed the video for you right here, but if you head over to the DC Universe Online site, you can't miss it.
Mythic CTO to keynote at East Coast Games Summit
Mythic Entertainment's Chief Technology Officer Matt Shaw is slated to keynote the America's Video Game Expo (VGXPO) and its East Coast Games Summit. VGXPO will take place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, from November 21-23.In a session titled "MMOs, Everyone Wants to Do One!", Shaw will discuss the differences in developing single player games versus MMO titles, and the lessons learned along the way. Some highlights of the upcoming East Coast Games Summit at VGXPO include: "Pitch Your Game Idea": a session for entrepreneurs to pitch their game concepts to industry leaders. "Scrum Deconstructed": a hands-on workshop for game industry management and technologists. "Breaking In": a conference for students and others interested in making a career out of games. Speakers from companies like Acclaim Entertainment, Electronic Arts, BioWare, and Nexon will be at VGXPO as well. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
