Round and Round the Development Duldrums

Recently I managed to get into a beta of a new game, which I cannot say, as I have been NDA'd. But looking back at the process that I had to go though I had some thoughts I figured I would share.

Alot of times as a gamer I wonder why there is little innovation in so many new games. The lack of new game dynamics, and just in general a stagnation in most game genres. Now before I get chastised here, let me explain: I have been playing MMO's for a while now, not as long as some, but for a while. I have been in WoW upwards of level 40, Guildwars until Nightfall, with all my character slots with 20's, DAoC for a few weeks, and a bunch of others that I tried out. So needless to say in the Genre I have been around the block, not as much as some, but I have been there. I have been playing shooters for a long time as well, Doom, Quake, Unreal, Tribes, AA, BF.... all but 2142 (I hate adware). Also played a good amount of RTS, Total war, AoE: 1, 2, and 3, Rise of nations, C&C. Anyways, you get the point, I have been gaming for years, I'm not discriminate against consoles, or pc, or any type of game really... so that sets a base line for my ability to judge, and gives you an idea of where i'm coming from.

So now on to what I'm talking about. In MMO gaming it seems that nobody has really found a way to lessen the gap between casual players, and the hardcore insane. We can start with WoW, which I admit is a bad baseline to start with, but being the current standard for MMO development... Hardcore guilds and people run in and rush to 60 in a matter of weeks, inflate market price on everything, and make it so that people that take there time leveling up get screwed out of good gear. To combat that Blizzard tried to make systems where the higher level people would lose interest in bothering the lower level people. BG's, New Raid Dungeons, ect. The problem is that some of these things backfired, BG's lead to twinking... the new raids went to guilds dumping lower level members in favor of more sixties for raiding ect.

The problem with the innovation that blizzard invested in is that it didn't do anything to help the problem, and being a big game company, they had to see that coming didn't they? I know that a lot of the innovation limitations comes from the people that play the game, and in an MMO world that can be tough to deal with, but is this the best that can be done? In the past one of the ways that this problem was dealt with was that after certain levels you couldn't buy lower tier items on the AH. In WoW though the problem arises that there is no reasonable limit on character creation on a sever to stop people from just making alts and mailing gold down to do what they want.

In other games, I have to wonder why more co-op play hasn't arisen... in the LOTR games, Two towers, ect. from the movies, drop in drop out co-op was there, its there in Gears... and its great, sometimes its not practical. For example, I don't see Halo with the multicolored master chiefs being right.

Now these are just light examples, I'm sure many many more game features that have been a long time coming are out there...

So now on to the why... In getting into the beta that I'm in, the hoops that you have to jump though to get an invite is crazy... You really have to know the developer's, be in a forum they frequent ect. Now I'm all about making sure people are qualified to test, god knows I know that that sort of thing is needed. However you saw the list of games I have been playing, I can write in decent English... I obviously have ideas floating in my head that might benefit the game development... However if I apply to a game to do this without being friends with someone that is in the development team, I wont have a chance to get in. Now i know that being in the community that I would want in because of the experience that I would have to be there, ect. Obviously those guys are qualified to test, however, if you only have those guys, just that point of view, you create a skew from new ideas and start developing in a bubble.

In the MMO environment this creates a real issue though because these testers are mostly either very causal, but still looking at everything from the power gamer angle, or are still power gamers. As such the casual gamers get SOL'ed in the process.

This is just my opinion but I think the development process needs to be re evaluated a little bit, more people that have not been in a Beta environment should be brought in to give feedback, qualified people, gamers, we need fresh ideas, and the only way to get them is from the outside.

Microsoft took that idea and ran with it, Vista, Office, ect... They gave a long open betaing period to get ideas on features, fixes on bugs, ect. I think game development needs to start taking that approach a lot more. Indie development on the live arcade is going great, but indie development is not going to turn out an MMO, or a Halo, only the major developers can afford that stuff.