Building a Masterpiece: MMOGs and the Hype Machine

By Ralsu

The buzz for a new massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) starts shockingly early these days. Sometimes a company will announce a game is starting development well before the first line of code is written:


Sure, my story reeks of hyperbole (and you thought you'd never need the stuff you were supposed to learn in 9th grade literature!), but it bears some truth. Simply put, some companies decide to announce plans for a game as soon as possible to stir up interest and ensure success. The question I'll explore is whether the “hype machine” helps or hurts MMOGs in general. Then I'll analyze how hype may have affected Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO).

The Hype Machine Makes Sense

Ever plan a party and didn't mail invitations so almost nobody showed up? Anticipation is a powerful tool. Let's look at our example of Magical Crickets Online (MCO) from earlier. The moment MCO is announced, MMOG fans will begin to hunt for a good description of the game to find out what it's about. If the design concept is innovative enough or mimics a game they already play, gamers will read up on MCO during the development process. They'll watch to see if MCO is moving the direction they want and if SuperGames is receptive to gamer feedback. They'll see the developer posts that promise an extensive crafting system and massive player-vs-player mounted combat.

Another uncomfortable situation stemming from a lack of hype is when you arrive at a function in jeans only to realize that it is a formal dinner. Advertising what's going on early in a game helps avoid a messy situation in which gamers feel they don't have enough information to know whether or not the new game will be good. MCO's intrigued fans will opine about some feature that seems lacking or praise the measures SuperGames is taking to prevent gold farming. They'll argue with fellow community members for months about what role a Cricket Doom Warrior will play in a party that already has a Cricket Executioner. Several major gaming news sites (like Ten Ton Hammer) will interview the key designers behind MCO and post their thoughts. By the time MCO enters beta, fans will know if it is a party they'll want to attend. SuperGames will find an instant customer base at launch in those who like what they've seen.

Lastly, have you ever discovered with regret that you'd missed an author's book signing at the local bookstore? Promoting the involvement of a celebrity or a respected company can really boost interest in a game. It's foolish not to put out information that the janitor who conceived of the notion of Magical Crickets will be helping develop some of the quests in MCO.

The Hype Machine Makes No Sense

Sometimes mailing invitations too early is worse than mailing them late. It's hard to be excited about an event is too far away to feel real. Continuing with the imaginary Magical Crickets Online (MCO), announcing the game 3 years out could do more harm than good. The announcement of MCO should be an electrifying moment. Fans of MMOGs are happy to hear just about any game planned, and so they go nuts. But MCO isn't coming out until 2009. That means open beta will likely occur in 2008. In the meantime, a dozen other MMOGs will land on store shelves. Unless MCO is exceptionally innovative or makes use of a famous license, it's just one game in a pile—and it is so far out that it's easy to forget about in the face of more immediate options.

The more time you have to think about going to a party, the more you expect out of it. After waiting for a party for years, it'd damn well better feature some clowns and an acrobatic monkey. With MCO almost 3 years out, people definitely have enough time to know what to expect. The thing is, they'll come to expect more. Anybody remember what happened to Fable? Fans of that game where promised a very open-ended world where every decision impacted gameplay in the future. It was an ambitious project that didn't come out as promised, and people were in no mood to forgive the absence of features announced from the first day of development. If MCO is hyped as having the most massive PvP battles involving cricket mounts ever present in a videogame, then SuperGames has to deliver.

The marquee above the ticket office at the college in my town was announcing a night of comedy with Bill Cosby when we first moved here last August. I was jazzed about it. Unfortunately, Mr. Cosby had to reschedule for reasons unknown to me, and his concert got pushed from November 2005 to November 2006. I've had nearly a year to think about it, and now I feel apathetic about the show. I'm sure Mr. Cosby will be just as funny this year as he would have been last year, but something is different. It works the same with videogames I think. No matter how great MCO will turn out to be, give people too long to wait for it and they may just lose interest. Often times, announcements of celebrity contribution to a project are better left for closer to release.

DDO's Hype Machine Made Sense

Anytime a game based on Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is announced, gamers raise both eyebrows: the first one is raised in excitement while the second is raised in skepticism. We D&D fans have endured some sad attempts to incorporate D&D mechanics into a game (Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor anyone?). With any license as huge as D&D, I think a company would do well to let fans in on the development so that they can see first-hand that the game will stay true to its namesake. Turbine did well in this aspect by announcing DDO roughly 20 months prior to launch. A majority of the interviews during development of DDO stressed the ways in which the game would faithfully execute D&D rules.

While early announcement of DDO gave D&D fans a chance to check for accuracy, the revelation of some of DDO's other features gave the game time to win over MMOG fans who were not avid D&D fans. For instance, the active combat system in DDO appealed to those who tired of gamers running macros (computer programs) to play their characters. The early proclamation that DDO was not a solo-friendly game allowed potential subscribers time to adjust (even if they didn't like and the Twilight Forge module will make DDO more solo-friendly). Others interested in DDO praised the decision to use instances for all quests and not to award experience for kills as ways to prevent griefing. Still others lauded the way diminishing quest rewards would keep grinding to a minimum and encouraged doing all quests. Again, early hype of DDO made sense.

In the end—and perhaps the most important part of DDO's hype machine—Turbine delivered what it promised. Having read the forums for 5 months prior to DDO's launch and read beta previews (like the one by Shayalyn here on this site), I knew exactly what to expect. Turbine came through on a good time schedule, and it is continuing those standards of timeliness and clarity as it announces new content for DDO.

Final Thoughts

The Hype Machine works if built properly. A company must announce its game far enough out to let people get excited about it—but not so far out that they forget about it. The company must clearly communicate the game's features and then deliver on its design concept. Finally, special contributors (writers, designers, artists) should be kept under wraps until the company has something to show fans. Turbine handled all of these aspects very well with DDO, and the game enjoys more success as a result.

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