Life at an underground game company.
Community
As creators, we will not recuse ourselves.
41 month ago
Recently, much hay has been made of the ending of Mass Effect 3. Some people have even gone so far as to make complaints with the United States Federal Trade Commission, and the Better Business Bureau. They are pushing to blur a line that should not, in our opinion ever be blurred.
That line is the border between ownership or those who own or create, and the viewership or those who play or experience a creative work.
As some of you may know, Emerald Kingdom is trying something a little different in respect to the common MMORPG. We’re going to be implementing a linear, moving story. The folks who start on Day 0, will have had a different experience in the world than the people who start on day 472. The world will change, and grow. As people interact with the Major NPC’s (The Sprites) of the world, and different things happen, the story will evolve and move in a direction that is ultimately player population controlled to a large degree.
However, as we are the ones writing not only the story, but the story branches…it can be said that we are the authors of the world. No doubt. While we are moving the story along, and programming the game with tools to implement a sequential and forward moving series of events, there are going to be people who will like, love or hate the events that occur.
As creators, we expect this. Like life, unexpected and unfavorable things happen. What we, as a company will not do is attempt to backtrack. We will not bend one knee to those who feel we should make changes to the story because, well, they feel it should happen differently, or it should go this way instead of that way.
I will state here and now that while we expect people to live in, and enjoy the world of Emerald Kingdom, we want to make it completely clear that as people who want to tell a story, we control what we create. We will not recuse ourselves, or abdicate our role in creating the world, the story, and the events. No matter how many petitions a group of players put up.
Now, that’s not to say we will not listen to what players have to say, and heed their feedback. We are after all, committed to eating our own dog food, and listening to the good council of the people who play.
But there is a big big difference between players who are giving feedback, and players who want control. There is a huge difference between those would would suggest, and those who feel it’s their heaven sent right to dictate what they feel should be done.
We will always listen and more often than not, heed and take into consideration feedback. We will never give in to a demand. Especially when we are the creators. We will not relinquish control of what we have created to that very minor subset of gamers who feel that, having played, they have ownership of the characters, the world, and the direction. To those gamers we would say: the author, the creator has the final say. Always.
Nobody threatened Warner Brothers because of the way The Matrix trilogy ended. Stephen King was not reported to the FTC for how he chose to end his Dark Tower series. I have yet to see a Final Fantasy fan file a complaint with the BBB over Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy 7.
Do you know why? Because while you enjoy these characters, at the end of the day, they are not yours. They are not within your power to dictate. That role is reserved for the creator of works. If you cannot accept this, if you cannot abide by this then I have a few suggestions for you.
1) Turn off your computer.
2) Go out side, and take a good 5 mile walk.
3) Start your own game company, with your own characters, that you control. It’s never been easier.
But do not dare to think for one moment that because you are a fan of a work, that lets you form a mob to dictate how creativity is directed. If you bring such a mob to our door, you will be met with equal measure. We will not cower in the face of such a mob, because we know them to be a bogey monster under the bed: a vocal minority. A vocal minority’s only route of effectiveness boils down to bullying.
There is not one among us here who will put up with a bully. We will always listen, but we will not be browbeaten, or cowed by anyone. We do what we do because we are creative, because we have things in our heads we must express, for a variety of reasons. But our creative efforts are just that, our creative efforts. The act of creating piece of art, or story, a sculpture…the primary driving force is the need for the artist to express themselves. Secondary to this, while it is always welcome, is that other people enjoy the art. But what’s been lost in this discussion is “One persons art, is another persons garbage”.
If our art is garbage to you, that’s okay. We cannot possibly hope to please all people. But do not dare to think this gives you a right to dictate what it is to everyone, including the creator. You may have the right to critique, praise it, or be critical of it. But no creator asked for you to sanction it. It is what it is, if you like it, or love it…awesome. If you don’t move along.
You will get no countenance from this group of creators.
Re-thinking the “one size fits all” Customer Service Model.
02 months ago
My recent interactions with Three Rings has led me to think about the way companies deal with customers. Let me start by changing up the dichotomy here a bit and say I think companies should not deal with customers. Companies should work with their customers when issues arise.
While it’s important to gauge customer feedback about their interaction with a customer service rep, it got me to thinking that perhaps in order to ditch the one size fits all model from the CS side of things, we should be gathering feedback from the company representative about the customer.
My recent poor interaction with Three Rings was, at least from my point of view, what you get when you treat every customer the same. When you treat every customer the same, you run the risk of alienating them when they may have isolated or singular issues. Treating every customer the same also leads you down the road of limiting your perspective and, in some cases using only a hammer to pound every problem to a simple solution. Unfortunately, while those solutions may work, they run the risk of completely putting off the customer, or forcing the customer to scream and shout in order to get the extra attention a situation may need in order to be resolved. It forces the customer into an adversarial relationship with the service provider: he has to fight to make sure he is listened to, when the very obvious has been ignored. Such is the almost always the case when you get burned out or otherwise swamped CS employees who respond with canned or form like responses.
When you turn it into an adversarial relationship, both parties suffer. Not all customers are right, but just because you hold all the keys, and cover all the doors does not, and should not lead you to think that you are right by default. Customer and Customer Service rep each put their pants on one leg at a time, and CS Reps should consider, always, that no two situations are always alike.
It’s this fundamental point that customer service reps lose sight of, I think. It leads the adversarial situation down a path where any CS Rep is then willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It leads them to think every customer is guilty until proven innocent, every customer is trying to game them. On some level, I suppose you could say “Who can blame them, have you seen how gamers act?”. But see, that immediately puts you on the road to assume all gamers are bad apples. It assumes that because there is a segment of bad actors, the easiest way to deal is to assume they are all bad, until one has the temerity to show they are not. But, it’s very difficult to overcome for that good user, because the CS Rep has fallen into a sort of tunnel vision. It can become an impossibly steep climb for the good user, and usually…they walk away. This then becomes a lose lose. The company loses, and the customer loses. But, the customer only loses once. If that customer is a good sneezer, the losses to the company can be ongoing. This is why we have to think about this problem differently. We have to move away from the “one size fits all” or “guilty until proven innocent” model of game customer service.
But, how do we solve this? How do we even things out. More importantly, how do we grade the customers, and the people who interact with them?
We’ve all had a company call or email us to “take a short survey” on their experience with their company, or their customer service. This is all well and good. We want to know if a customer has a positive or negative view of the company right? In this way, CS reps are reviewed, and build their reputation within the company itself.
I propose we start thinking about doing the same for the customers. We should be letting customer service reps grade the customer interactions. Both customer and customer service grades would need to be peer reviewed. i.e: karma assigned, but meta moderated.
In this way, if we get a customer who sends tickets that are hostile, full of swearing or threats/intimidation…we can tailor our response in the future. If we get a customer who is polite, and has a good history of working with customer service when there are issues, we know that we should take some extra care with them.
Such a system for game customer service would allow us to scale our response with granularity, for good customers, and customers we should think about firing. Applying working features of the big and small city models, the Slashdot meta mod system…and perhaps using a good curve to weight things once the customer count is big enough…we can categorize and tailor our approach to our most valued commodity: the people who patronize our service.
Such a system has to be expedient on the CS Rep side, as well as the customer side. We need to rate these quickly, but also allow for detailed feedback. Customer analysis should be a part of the equation, and it would appear not many people in the games industry, and especially those who provide online, multiplayer games are doing enough of this. Perhaps they are, but I’ve not seen much evidence of it. I see a lot of this “one size fits all” approach, which I do not think we would see if there was a significant amount of customer analysis going on.
That said, we are thinking about this. We’re thinking about this right now. Why? Because as everyone at Double Cluepon is a player of games we believe our expectations are similar to those of other people who play games. We also know that customer service is a multifaceted thing, but still ostensibly boils down to one key idea: treat others how you would want to be treated.
Interests, Money, Contracts and the pitfalls of who owns what.
02 months ago
I woke this morning, to find that there’s been a bit of a dust up over at Spilt Milk Studios. I wanted to talk about this a bit, because in this world of games, with IP issues relating to code and art and people sweating equity and love into a product…things like this distract, and generally cause good studios to go bad.
When I started Double Cluepon with some of the original members, I knew there were things I had no way of doing myself. I am not a developer. I am not an artist. I know nothing of modern animation techniques. While I do know how to get into source code and fix issues, or hack into place a workable kludge, I would never call myself a programmer. While I can sketch out something in what amounts to a rough approximation, I am certainly no artist. I can work in Illustrator and After Effects, but I am certainly not an animator. In my 25 years of I.T. work, I have done a little of everything. For what it’s worth? I handle almost all of the infrastructure here at Double Cluepon, in addition to my duties as a corporate officer, and producer of Emerald Kingdom.
But, when it came time to set up Double Cluepon, one of the ugliest duties I had to take on was: contracts, fairness, and equity. I could sit here and lecture you on the high minded principles of all three of those. But at the end of the day, if there is one thing I have learned is, when money is the frame of the conversation, it stops being a conversation. What it evolves into is a game of stacking scales to achieve what everyone thinks might and could be a balanced equation. Even more bluntly: it’s a losing proposition.
I could also bore you with the details of how Double Cluepon is a real corporation, with all the paperwork and fun extraneous crap that goes with it. But, really…that’s just the means to the end. What it really boils down to is this: all of our contracts are based on the premise of inherent fairness across the board, without reference to, or notice of money, except when absolutely necessary.
We have contractors, and some of them get paid retainers. Those contractors sign a release for the IP they create, and they are paid. They are under an NDA. That’s about it. I keep it simple.
People who are actually owners here? They are also under an NDA. They have all signed IP releases. (Even I have done so). The IP belongs to Double Cluepon. Period. Who owns Double Cluepon? Anyone who owns stock & works here, and is not on contract. We don’t have to worry about money and percentages. Nobody here is greedy, but we want to make money. We all care about our products. There have been owners who have come and gone for various reasons. In the end, we have a solid group of folks dedicated to getting Emerald Kingdom out the door. Nobody’s thinking about residuals, or royalties. Nobody’s thinking about revenue sharing. Why? Because as a stockholder, with an open process they examine themselves…they know collectively they are in control. While they give up some measure of that control when they elect me as CEO, or Raguel as CFO…they know they could easily reclaim it with ease.
That’s not to say we’re blissfully ignorant by choice about matters of money: we have angel funding. We keep a tight reign on the books. I report to both our financiers, and the board of directors. But we all know straight up: income has to be there in order to get your share. The best way to make sure the fairness was there, from the get go was to split ownership of the company around. Some folks hold more stock than others. The ones who hold more? They’ve voted to not only dilute their own stock in the past to accommodate the need of the company, but the ones who hold less have never held back either…they know they’re first in line for more when the time comes.
Now, you’re saying to yourself…Azrael? How did you get so many folks to work like this?
Easy: I was open, got to the point, and told them exactly how it was, why it needed to be like that…and oh yeah…here’s the books and the charter. Read as you want. I also had a business plan, (long and short). In short: people like it when you can demonstrate that you in fact do have your shit together.
I didn’t act coy, or evasive. I tried to answer every question. I was honest, direct and to the point. The biggest point was this: I don’t know if this will work or not…but take a look at the calculations: it’s worth the risk. That’s why we have an awesome group of people, they believe, and they want this as much as everyone else. By coming to the table with clean hands, and open dealing…I secured the trust, and the loyalty of the people here.
Let me clarify that a bit too: I secured their trust and loyalty to Double Cluepon, as a whole. Not to me, or any one person. I am not the corporate body. I may be the mouthpiece at times, and the face of it at others…but this is bigger than any one of us. Out of this grew a culture at Double Cluepon that is one of the finest I have ever been a party to: we love what we do, without a lot of ego. We don’t feel we need to take shit from anyone, and we feel suitably equipped to take on conventional thinking and do not give a jot or a tittle about what folks might say. We do not need to be stroked, or petted. We do what we do, in the hopes of being successful.
By framing the conversation of credit due as success, rather than money…I could be fair on a level anyone could understand, without being pedantic. Without having to worry about one person having 5 cents more than this other person. Success is the reward here at Double Cluepon. The money will be nice too. But success for ourselves, and our products is the real compensation. Being fair, open and being honest when you present success as the compensation, as opposed to money…you can get talented, awesome people who care, give a shit…and take pride in the work they sign their name to. If we ever have a contract dispute in this company, it will be with someone outside the corporate body. Not in it. The likelihood of that happening is low too: we tend to cultivate people, and keep them close. We don’t try to screw anyone.
We feel for the two parties of Spilt Milk Studio. It has less a chance of happening here. Why? Because success is our yardstick, our currency. We know the rest of the compensation comes if we reach the mile marker “Success!”.
Ja Mata!
The sad tale of Squeenix.
1I was asked by a couple of people I know to say a few words about Square-Enix. While I have a great deal of mixed feelings regarding this company, I’m going to set down how I feel about it, because it does relate in some ways to Double Cluepon, how Emerald Kingdom got some of its start, and where Square went wrong. (Hint: It was not North American fans, or Japanese fans, or inferior NA releases over better JP releases)
The impetus for Emerald Kingdom has some of its roots in Squaresoft titles. I personally was amazed at the story on Final Fantasy VIII. It grabbed me, but then…so did the battle system. (Yes, yes…a great many do not like junction/draw, but I did, and that’s a topic for another post…)
But there is something to be said for Square in it’s heyday: they had the balls to try new things, to throw it all on the table and take chances…take risks. They had no choice, really; the RPG space was a wild and dangerous frontier on consoles. It was fast becoming a better genre on the PC side of things too.
But after that trilogy of VII, VIII, and IX, something began to change. The beginning of the change was Final Fantasy X, and the height of the change came when Square bought their last real competitor: Enix. The end of that change came when they had finally squandered everything they had, lost their way and released unfettered crap.
We can extol the virtues of Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9 all we want. Everyone who played in that golden age has their favorite. I will tell you right now, that the Gel, Mark and Weaves in Emerald Kingdom have their spiritual roots in the draw and junction system of Final Fantasy 8.
When Final Fantasy X came out, I immediately purchased a Playstation2, and a copy of it. I was relocating at the time, so I rigged it up to the hotel TV, and went at it. Now, I happened to think it was a very compelling story. The Sphere Grid was about as close as you can get to a pure RPG; you could plan your characters with the same finesse as you could in pen and paper. But Final Fantasy X ushered in a trend that has only grown with time and new FF titles. The trend of evolving from real RPG games to that of interactive movies.
It started with Final Fantasy X. It was subtle, but it was there. They were sacrificing their pedigree in RPG’s by upsetting the awesome balance between story and game play. You could see it in many ways: the side quests were weaker, and not as fun. The battle systems limit breaks were really kind of rehashed, dumbed down and not worthy.
Don’t get me wrong, that first night? I stayed up till about 3 AM playing FFX. I was enthralled. I happen to love story, but I also happen to like seeing how well I can do damage, or fight strategically.
Then came XI, and X-2. XI was a halfway decent foray into Online Gaming with the Final Fantasy franchise. Final Fantasy X-2 was absolutely terrible. X-2 was Hot TopicRPG. It actually lowered and somewhat debased strong female characters in games. It’s battle system was terrible, the characters were weak, the story was contrived and its environments were wretched. I realize there are fans of X-2, and I am not saying that, for those fans…it does not have redeeming qualities. What I am saying is: it’s a weak title when held up to former Square titles, and other contemporaries. But one thing was certain: the Interactive Movie nature of Final Fantasy titles was well on it’s way to becoming a firmly grounded thing at Square.
I stopped playing the Final Fantasy series after X-2. I’ll be even more direct: I stopped playing X-2 less than 1 quarter of the way into it. Stuffing band members into the elevator in the right order? Seriously? I was done. It was wretched.
Kingdom Hearts was a breath of fresh air. Ironically enough, it had an awesome battle system, great story, and revitalized characters from two old stalwarts in their respective areas: Square and Disney. Kingdom Hearts was an amazingly fresh game. Tetsuya Nomura rarely misses the mark when it comes to character design, and you’ll notice that my favorites are typically the ones where he’s left his mark.
So, what happened? Why is XIII rated the way it is, and why was XIV practically D.O.A? Why was Kingdom Hearts II inferior after all of the hype, and the awesome that was the Deep Dive trailer?
It’s simple really: Square bought and merged with Enix. (I dont expect things to get better since they have aquired Eidos either. Although a glimmer of hope was released this year in Deus Ex, so you never know)
I’ll say it right here: buying Enix was a bigger mistake for Square than making that ridiculous “Spirits Within” movie which almost bankrupted them.
Why was it such a big mistake? I’ll tell you why: by buying their main competitor, the drive to innovate stopped to a large degree. There was no need to take big risks. Square “won”. They could rest on their laurels knowing they had come out on top. There are some problems with this attitude. Chief of which is arrogance that your view is the only view that really matters. The next problem is, complacency sets in and begins to stagnate you.
Don’t believe me? “After release, director Motomu Toriyama felt that the lower-than-expected review scores for a main Final Fantasy series game came from reviewers who approached the game from a Western point of view.” If that’s not the height of arrogance, I really don’t know what is. It couldnt possibly be the designers, no…it was the players, they’re wrong. How dare they?
But the real proof in the pudding here is what Yoichi Wada had to say on the same subject, which goes to the point of stagnation:
“Some value it highly, while others really don’t like it.” He added, “Should Final Fantasy become a new type of game or should Final Fantasy not become a new type of game? The customers have different opinions. It’s very difficult to determine which way it should go.”
Even Square does not know which path to follow at this juncture. Lost, rudderless on a tumultuous sea of a changing game landscape. But this was not even the worst thing.
No, the worst was yet to come. It’s name was Final Fantasy XIV. A game so bad the company has issued not one, but two official apologies for it. Square has lost it’s way. From the aspects of design, game play…and most recently…they have lost their way financially as well:
Arrogance, short-sightedness, complacency. You can think whatever you want about their audiences. You can think their failures are because of North American players, or Japanese Players, or people who are hating on them for whatever reason. But the facts are this: Square-Enix has been waning for a long while. Their slide has been going on for years, and they have only themselves to blame. It’s the direct result of not listening to players, and thinking that, having bought all the competition, they are king of the hill. The problem with this is, eventually you have to defend the hill, and there are plenty of people sharpening their swords right now to challenge Square in what has traditionally been their bread and butter staple: the immersive RPG. There are people trying on brass knuckles right now, to steal Square’s milk money in another genre: MMORPGs. XIV is an utter failure, it has harmed the Final Fantasy brand badly. It’s going to take years of development, and release to fix the harm done to the brand itself. (Not XIV, even if they fix the problems, it’s D.O.A. and I am nearly 100% certain it will never break even, and will close with a net loss)
When you remove all competition, and you remove the need to be competitive, and you lose your objectivity. You lose your ability to think in terms of “My competitor just did this, well…I’ll show them…I’ll do THIS. HA HA!”. This, more than anything has salted the soil at Square. Their complete and wholesale dilution of the Final Fantasy franchise is going to haunt them for years to come. At some point, a Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin of RPG’s is going to come along and knock Square the hell out. That’s how the market works…the weak die, and get swallowed up.
Square needs to get their house in order. They need to do it quick. They can start by listening to the players, and perhaps…going back to the basics. People have been telling square for years what they want, and Square has arrogantly time and again told them they know what’s best. It’s time for them to take a step back, listen, and grow.
The opposite of growing is dying. The choice is theirs.
Advice for Writers
25 months ago
I hope all you American readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I know I did. It was wonderful to go back home and see my family and my pets! But most of all – the weekend signaled the end of my Fall Quarter at University… So that means, I SURVIVED FINALS. \(^o^)/
I wish I had that much dedication...
I took three screenwriting courses this quarter. I know – I’m a masochist.
And tugging in the back of my mind was the fact that Emerald Kingdom was waiting for me. I felt so bad that I hadn’t written anything for the story in days.
But I’m here now and ready to go!
So I’d like to give you guys some advice to fellow writers that I’ve discovered while on my little hiatus. I was aiming it more for screenwriting advice, but luckily most of these overlap for all kinds of writing!
1.) Write every day. I know it can be a little tricky, especially if you have work, school or both – but it is crucial. I made a promise to myself that I would write at least a page or two every night before bed whether it is for my classes or for some short stories to keep the creative juices flowing. NaNoWriMo is a good example of having a deadline with a certain amount of content that needs to be reached per day. Did any of you participate? Leave a comment and tell me how you’re doing!
2.) Keep going. This one can be a little hard to get one’s head around, especially if you’re so passionate about your project. It’s so easy to keep going back over the pages you’ve written and keep editing. But guess what – you’re not going anywhere! Keep typing and just finish it. You can always go back later. Trust me, you’ll end up rewriting the first ten pages of your story before you realize you don’t even have an ending and your deadline is tomorrow. And you’ll probably edit your whole thing about one hundred times anyway; so just spare yourself the agony. Speaking of agony…
3.) Hurt your characters. From watching many of his productions, Joss Whedon has an unspoken rule: “If your audience likes a character, kill him. Or at least maim him.” Probably the most recent example of this is in Game of Thrones. Oh man, do people get trampled in that show. But I always come back for more. That’s what’s so great about it! As Kurt Vonnegut said, “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters are, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Without that, the characters aren’t challenged and they don’t grow. If you’re not feeling particularly evil that day, you can always hurt them psychologically or emotionally. You have my permission to ruin a character’s life. d(^.^)
4.) Raise the stakes. Things need to happen in stories, if you didn’t already figure that out. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, something always has to happen. In each little “chapter” that I write for a character, I make sure there is some sort of conflict that the character has to overcome. It creates a little mini-movie that also builds the character’s personality. Without that, I can’t make things worse and worse for the character to overcome in the grand scheme of things and then become something different at the end. Without raising the stakes, my characters can’t change – they, and I, become complacent.
5.) READ. Author John Green said, “I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you’re trying to be a writer because it’s the only apprenticeship we have – the only way of learning HOW to write a story.” Read good books; read bad books; blogs (Look, you’re already ahead of the game!), articles, friend’s stories, scripts – just do it! You’ll learn what to do, what not to do, and how you would do it differently. Hell, read John Green’s Paper Towns while you’re at it! It’s one of my favorites.
Andromeda's best writer is Bleepblurp of the Ninth Sector. High five, buddy!
So there you have it! It’s a little short, but you’ve got the general idea. But don’t take just my word for it. After all, the best advice doesn’t come from anyone else but you. You can look up so many articles on how to be the best writer in the galaxy but it will never teach you what you can learn yourself.
Today’s question of the day is as follows:
What are you reading lately? I need some new stuff. I really should read A Song of Ice and Fire, though…
See you soon!
<3 Castiel
P.S. You might want to be on the lookout for a special sneak peek into the first chapter of the story with a little bit of art to go along with it! ^_~ More info on the way!
