Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

During the beta stage of MMOs, developers are under an inordinate amount of pressure. While the publishers shoulder the monetary strain, it’s truly up to the developers to actually produce a game that’s going to sell. If they don’t create something of worth, they can kiss their future contracts good-bye. Yet publishers rarely fork over bundles and bundles of cash to continue delaying a game until it’s “just right,” and so a hard release date may be internally set and the developer has to strive to hit that time period.

So, more often than not, the biggest amount of pressure for a development company comes during the beta testing period. Even during the closed beta experience, word of a game that isn’t fun or is absurdly broken will spread. For gamers, the threat of NDAs almost doesn’t exist. There were dozens of videos on YouTube showcasing Warhammer Online and Age of Conan before the release of those two games. While we may never know the true impact the beta leaks from those two games had on their end sales figures, it's a safe bet that at least some money was lost thanks to negative feedback from beta leaks that occurred during the testing.

Other companies - Destination Games and the Earth and Beyond team for example - didn't survive poor beta tests or their leaks. One studio that did survive a poor beta test along with an eventual service cancellation and lived to tell the tale was NetDevil, a team that is now working on Jumpgate Evolution, LEGO Universe, and a few other unnamed projects. The studio's president, Scott Brown, previously talked with Ten Ton Hammer about beta tests and what developers face during that time period. Here’s what he had to say:


Unsurprisingly, NetDevil has opted to push back the Jumpgate Evolution beta period until the team believes that the game is *truly* ready for public consumption, because any preemptive release of the game could spell potential disaster. It’s a smart move, but one that many MMO companies can’t make due to struggling finances. Thus the feeling of helplessness and frustration continues on the part of the gamer. Despite their outcries, games continue to be released with numerous bugs, unfinished content, and poor game systems.

Perhaps one of the biggest examples of this happening occurred with the beta test and release of Age of Conan. After approximately five years of development time, it was rumored that the team at Funcom was running out of money and needed to push things out as quickly as possible.

Under the safety of anonymity, one ex-Funcom employee recently talked to Ten Ton Hammer about the days leading up to the final stages of AoC development. It’s a sad story, but one that probably happens more often than we think.

“The problem was essentially too much to do in too little time,” our source said. “You had a team frantically trying to finish the game in the first place, then you had all these new and exciting bugs popping up. It wasn't that they didn't care. It was that there was too little time until launch and too many things that needed to be fixed.”

“I'd liken it to building a house,” the source continued, “and having your spouse wandering around telling you maybe this room should be blue and the couch should be over here, and that's all well and good but we needed to get the walls up first.”