BTW if you don't follow my Twitter posts, note that I am just here posting more or less the gist of the lectures, not doing too much editorializing. For instance, I couldn't agree LESS with Hickman's analysis of why WAR had problems, but it is still interesting to see the perspective that he puts forwards.

Jeff Hickman
Executive Producer, Mythic Entertainment
Out of the Box(ed Product)
Thinking for an Online Age

Mythic around for 15 years, many products in mid to late 90s, all they have ever done is online. 1999 = Dark Age of Camelot, a MMO, launched in 2001. First big shot that put Mythic on the map. 2008 launched Warhammer Online, been an “interesting” year for Warhammer. Also oversees Ultima Online, longest continuously running MMO (12 years).

In the future, online is inevitable. Not online = not going to be here. Gaming is about social applications = facebook, myspace, bringing them together in a lot of different ways. Era of boxed product is ending. Pri mary way is digital distributions, online via the internet. Instant gratification, see the ad, click the button, engage them within 10 seconds. Agile, reliable, profitable, trackable. DD is absolutely profitable, it’s not just retail boxes. Being able to track and react to customers online is essential to the future! Improve game on a daily basis, polling metrics of how many are playing and buying – can’t do that unless you’re online.

In the future, will think beyond WoW. High quality, consistent, great value, great online game. Runescape second largest online game (though numbers are arguable). It’s not very much like WoW, it’s a different type of game. In the 50s and 60s TV was all about the Ed Sullivan show, some were semi-successful but most failed. If you wanted Ed Sullivan, you watched Ed Sullivan. WoW is the same way, if that’s what they want, that is what they will play.

Lessons Learned. DAOC developed by passionate gamers, fans of EQ1. Took those games and knowledge and poured it together, can do them better, could be really cool! Great game for the time it was in and market that it hit. Game about learning from the past. So hey, we can do Warhammer Online and not make any mistakes, right? WRONG.

Mistakes on Warhammer that shouldn’t have been made:

Ease of Play. Big difference between easy, and ease of use. Thought they learned the lesson of importance of ease of use, also important to hit right balance of easy / challenging gameplay. But didn’t – PvE in the beginning is too easy, the game doesn’t make you feel thrilled to play it. You need the thrill, challenge, and danger of death. Went too easy, and the game suffered for it. But need to grab them in the first 5-10 minutes. Miss the thrill of victory.

Social tools, but little reason to socialize. Make friends, those friends keep you in the game. Recognized that, had great ideas for social tools, built them into the game. But the game doesn’t require friends. Too easy to solo, don’t need friends.

Economy and commerce not tuned properly. Really hurt progress in game.

Things that worked well. Public Quests, that’s an idea that worked well. Came about because of a need in the game, but were literally inventing them when creating the game. A highlight of the game, will be in every game they do from now on. Really refined it in Land of the Dead expansion, already starting to see this in other MMO. Open Grouping = don’t have to ask permission, etc. Been very successful, particularly for an game where there is safety in numbers.

In the future, games are not products, they are services! This is the critical piece! About your relationship with the customers, through forums, discussions, etc. Want to give you feedback, and you need to listen! A community team, in-game events, these are all needed for a service. Lip service not enough, have to embrace the fact that your game is not about the launch. Only 20% of the work happens before you go live, the real work happens afterwards. CS tools – you need to be able to service the players and meet expectations that are set by monetization. Cannot treat CS folks like second class citizens, these are the people who are keeping your players long term. Operations may be basic stuff – billing, patching, uptime. You can’t just figure this out when you get close, need to be thinking about it from the very beginning.

Don’t forget marketing! Spending money still on marketing games like UO that are 12 years old. Don’t forget about how you monetize your game! Still amazing that people aren’t thinking about this from the very beginning – subscription, microtrans, doesn’t matter as long as you have a plan. We are all in the business to sell a service, if not thinking about it from the beginning it won’t be the service that it needs to be. Service and business model inform each other.

Think globally. Online world markets. Problem in the United States, we are too focused on ourselves. “How do I break open the market in Russia”, etc. Talk about it but don’t really do it, we aren’t learning from it yet. These are the markets of the future, Russia, South America, Asia. Look to Asia for the future – they are 5 years in the future compared to us. Getting DAOC into Korea – take a good game and launch it there! Total failure, lots of reasons. Bad choice of partner, game not built for Korea. Need to learn that lesson – going to take Warhammer to Korea, but not just doing localization but cultural-ization. Partnering with solid knowledgeable partner, addressing the issues they identify for their own market. Successfully game in NA doesn’t mean that you don’t need to make any changes, just doesn’t work that way.

John Smedley, SOE

EQ 10 years ago, going strong today. How many people playing games from 1999?

Current MMO audience - Avg age 33, gender 85% male, 15% female. Goal = expand that demographic.

Launched in Apr 28. 5 million registered last month. Shift for company into a new area of gaming, for kids. Making it since 2005. Needed to assemble the right team.

Lots of usability testing, built a usability lab. Over 100 usability tests. Kids don’t think the same way adults do. How are they different? Short attention spans, like 5 mins. Avg session = 20 minutes.

Registration screen failure – birthdate failure, because they didn’t want to do the math of what year they were born in. Gender also a problem because ingrained not to give out personal info. Today = where do you live, how old are you. From 45% to 95% of getting kids through that screen.

8 min download on avg cable connection. Focus on making it simple to get into the game.

Under 13 = 51%, 13-17 29%, 18-12 12%, 25-34 5%, 35-44 2%. Big section triggering COPA. Limited numbers as you go up in age. Material impact in selling, sell to the kid and sell to the parent. Gender = 67% male, 33% female. Great success, wanted 50/50 and taking steps to do that.

Lots of effort into a kid-friendly UI, some great examples out there like Club Penguin, Wizard 101. Learned a lot, but take a look at what kids are use to using, like Mac OS in schools = dock at the bottom. Allow kids to do something different every 5 minutes.
#1 job = brawler. #2 and #3 not as expected. Demo derby at 2, racecar driver at 3, chef at 5. Pet trainer very popular – why? Made pets cute. Need activities for girls besides combat. Thus, pets. Closer to Nintendogs than pets from WoW. Pets have their own personalities. Can reward for good or bad behaviors. Pets are microtrans items, built a class around it. Gestures / minigames to level your pet up.

Other minigames in Free Realms. Mining = match 3 minigame. Can go from killing to puzzle very quickly. Also chess, checkers, multiplayer games kids are familiar with. Chef popular, trying to bring all kind of other games into the game. High end 3d racing. Leveling curve was harder than they thought, found some stopping points with metrics and made them easier = more level 20 racecar drivers.

Newest game = card duelist. Launched with it but just did an expansion pack. More level 20 duelists than any other class. Similar to Pokemon or Yugioh. #1 seller in the store = card packs. Coming up is soccer in a few weeks. Wider international appeal, familiar to kids.
Built an in-game store to monetize. Click to buy, one-click. Fund wallet with station cash cards or online. Get cards into all major retail outlets, very successful experience. Back end revenue sharing with major retail outlets. Free month + microtrans currency. Retailers sell for 99 cents, successful conversion = revenue share. Distribution most important thing to get right after the game itself. On any given day 50% of players would use the store ( though that doesn’t mean that they buy things! ).

Interface for store was too confusing for kids. Not intuitive to go in and buy items without context. Leveling up through racing, put manikins out with cool racing gear on them. Really helped sales a lot, immediate spike. Starter screen = focus kids attention on what is new. Good example = Combat Arms. Sell a lot more stuff to girls = 68% of purchasers. Tradng card game, followed by health potions and ornamental things, then pets. New store experience with a recommendation engine. Need to treat this store like a real store, merchandising is important – ease of use isn’t actually the #1 thing, need to get kids to understand the value of what they are buying.
Doing another game in this space, not announced yet. Learning a lot about marketing to kids. Biggest thing is that TV works! Much more so in the kids market. Peak pop around 5:30 PM. Huge spikes when TV commercials run. Commercial = 5 mins later in game. These are not just new customers but returning ones, need to remind them to come back! See a FreeRealms ad followed by Wizard 101, that’s because it works.

40% of audience in EQ2 using microtransactions! Need to get people to understand value of it. Average of 8 days to convince player to actually pay it. 24 log ins (avg player 3 times a day). Have to convince mom and dad too.

Too much free stuff at launch?

Big surprise, Spain as 5th biggest country, behind Brazil in #4.