Farmer and Morningstar Interview - Page Two

style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Randy style="font-style: italic;">: I think the individuals today
have a much better understanding of what these sort of services are,
and what they are is a content delivery system. It’s really
all about keeping everyone interested until you can give them so more
content that they can consume.
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I think that’s
a problem, I really do, because people will become bored with your
content. I have a 70th level Night Elf Hunter on World of Warcraft, and
I don’t play anymore. The reason I don’t play
anymore is because I essentially can’t. My guild slowly grew
from a friends and family guild to a raiding guild, and I
couldn’t keep up. Now there’s this locked treadmill
that I can’t stay on. I’ll get through one raid
only to have the group already on a different encounter two tiers
higher than my current equipment set.
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Randy has a 70th
level character on World of Warcraft that he no longer plays.

The end game is screwed
up! At least from a casual player’s point of view. You really
end up narrowing your audience to this core element and you continue
producing content for this audience that will always hemorrhage.
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Part of the problem is
that a lot of the games, including World of Warcraft, did not take into
proper account the management of the relationships between people.
Guild tools are often anemic and the partying system – at
least in the World of Warcraft – doesn’t provide
real ways to find a party. They put in this big mechanism for creating
parties, and no one uses it. Everyone simply uses the chat channels to
get through and find people.
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And then, at 70th level
you also discover that the Hunter class is a horrible, horrible class
to choose. No one wants a Hunter in a party. They want a tank, or a
healer, or a mage, and taking a Hunter really turns into a big favor.
But these people don’t often know you (because your guild has
passed you by) and so they don’t trust you nor your pet.
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All the reinforcement in
the game really doesn’t prepare people for what
they’re going to experience in the end game.
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In essence, people are
in a content production business for an ever narrowing audience,
because they didn’t focus on the social component enough.

style="font-weight: bold;">Chip: I think Randy
hits on a lot there, and I’d like to hammer on the content
production side of that as well. There’s also a problem in
the idea that content production, in this type of environment, is
ferociously expensive. You really have to amortize it over a very large
user population in order to make the system sustainable.



Contrary to what Randy said, I’m not thoroughly convinced
that the companies that are making the games know that
they’re in the content production business. The traditional
games business is all about putting the game in a box and shipping it
out the door. In the online realm, you’re in this continuous,
iterated relationship with your customers, and you can’t
treat interaction with your customers as anything else but the main
event.



That means that the operational systems that you use and the deployment
system you have during the very initial conceptualization all the way
to the point where the bits actually land on the customers computers
must be streamlined and stripped down and made as cost efficient as
possible.



I’m not sure – I’m not privy to the
conversations that go on in the inner sanctum of places like Blizzard
– but I’m not sure that the companies doing this
even realize that this is the business that they’ve gotten
themselves into.

style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Randy style="font-style: italic;">: *laughs* That’s
honestly a question that’s too big for the time we have, but
I can say that most of the items that are in “Habitat
Redux” are already in our blog (Editor’s Note: You
can find it href="http://www.fudco.com/habitat">here style="font-style: italic;">.) and people are more than
welcome to read through the entries in there.

style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Randy style="font-style: italic;">: A lot of things have changed,
especially in the last five years, which is the last time I was between
jobs. That was the time that I did my contract work with Linden Labs
and Second Life, and things have just changed. I took my job at Yahoo
because I wanted a stable job environment for a little while and I knew
I was going to have a big impact while I was there.
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That whole experience
actually turned out better than I thought it would, but five years ago
was a difficult time. People really hadn’t bought into the
user generated content phenomena, and those are the kinds of things
that I specialize in. That’s different now.
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With my departure from
Yahoo, I’ve been overwhelmed with interest. And from what I
told you earlier, gaming and social blending is absolutely happening
right now. In the next wave of projects, you really can’t
tell whether they’re games or social media. On top of that,
there’s also a large corporate focus where a lot of people
are looking into gaming and social media in the corporate environment.
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I actually am
overwhelmed with interest from traditional gaming companies to more
socially minded companies like Yahoo. It’s a very good time
to look at a lot of options.

style="font-weight: bold;">Chip: I think what
Randy said is consistent with what’s happening to me as well.
There’s really some asymmetry between the interest Randy is
getting and the interest I’m getting, because our relative
areas of specialization are slightly different. He’s a social
media guru and I’m the technologist.



The thing about technology is that there are lots and lots of companies
that know they want technology. That’s something they can
wrap their heads around almost immediately. There are lots and lots of
companies looking to see if there’s a niche for me somewhere
that will let me push the envelope.



This raises some interesting challenges because the companies that are
interested in the technological things that I'm interested in and have
the resources to spend on doing something hard typically
aren’t involved in the kind of product space that
I’m interested in. However, the companies that are doing the
product things that I’m interested in don’t have
the resources to undertake the sort of technology initiatives I want to
explore.



So I really haven’t found that “sweet
spot” yet, but there are a lot of companies out there that
are interested. A lot of them. It’s been a wild month since
we parted ways with Yahoo.



What are we going to do next? I have no idea, but I’m sure
it’s going to be interesting.

style="font-weight: bold;">Chip: Wow. I
don’t get to play games any more because my kids are always
on the computer.

style="font-weight: bold;">Chip: Seriously!

style="font-weight: bold;">Chip: I’ve
been trying to get into World
of Warcraft, but I’ve got a 10th level character
that’s just been sitting there because every time I turn
around my kids are on the computer. If I would stop being such a
cheapskate I’d go and buy another computer. I have tons of
old computers from earlier companies I've worked, but none of them
actually have the horsepower necessary to run a game like WoW.



Unfortunately, as trite as it sounds, I’m not actually
playing anything. So really I’ve been spending my time with
technology experimentation and doing some writing.

style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Randy style="font-style: italic;">: And I am currently retired
from the World of Warcraft, but I have been dabbling with Pirates of
the Caribbean Online to do some research and see what it’s
like. Their play for free model is very interesting, and it definitely
gets your interest up. It’s a nice fun mix of activities as
well. You go from fighting things with a sword to some massive ship
battles in your first hour of play.
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And I think a lot of the
online games are realizing that they want to show you their really best
stuff right up front so that it catches your interest. Killing rats for
a few levels just isn’t as interesting, and showing your best
gameplay is much more effective at grabbing the casual player.
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Of course, I’m
also playing around with Metaplace.

If you’d like
to read Part
One of the interview, click here! If not, let us know what
you think of Randy and Chip’s prognosis of the industry by
discussing it on our forums!