One of the projects I've been working on is an unannounced social media game. I started to write this post about things I had learned on the project.
By the time I finished I realized I had also learned a lot about myself.
I've been building the Facebook, Web and Twitter presence for the new title, building a relationship with the potential audience. This is routine for online games, but it reminded me of a lesson I learned long ago.
In the late 1980's we were building the first round of online games for a set of Commodore 64 and Apple online services called QuantumLink and AppleLink. PC-Link came along about a year later, and in 1991 the company grew exponentially and was given a more familiar name: AOL.
Many nights I'd hang around in the chat rooms, getting to know the people online. This is before the Internet was invented, and a few hundred core users on each platform were the primary audience who paid $6 an hour just to access the service. (No, that's not a typo... and $6 an hour then is $10.75 adjusted for inflation now!)
After two years of doing this and designing several online games I knew the system and the audience well enough that I was able to design the original version of Neverwinter Nights for AOL.
A lot has been written about NWN on AOL being the first MMORPG that used graphics instead of text for game play.
But as the game designer I know that understanding the player was as important to the game's success as understanding the technology.
The bigger our industry gets, the more diverse our audience becomes. And that makes it more likely that your typical player is not "just like the game designer."
Which drives the question: what have you done in the last month to interact with your potential audience?
A focus group where you can watch people play an early version of your game? (And realize to your horror that the UI has issues you have to address.)
Talking with people who play our games, don't work in the industry and aren't the 1% leaving snarky one-line comments on industry websites?
Watching everyday people playing competitors' games without them realizing you're in the industry and interested in them?
Some of these things can be accomplished at a Best Buy watching people on the end-cap demo station. More often you'll need to proactively reach out to your potential players, and not just to that familiar core of opinion leaders.
Inside big publishers more of these opportunities are being offered to creative teams. indie developers need to find ways to do the same kinds of research, even though it's time consuming and the thing you have the least of is time.
I wonder what's playing on the Best Buy demo stations today?
Copyright (c) 2009- 2010, Don Daglow. All Rights Reserved.
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