Building an Online Game Community - The Wrong Way

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

Categories: Online Communities

This entire blog post is about how a game development company shot themselves in the foot, perhaps without even knowing it. I’m seeing it first-hand that what they’re doing is severely crippling their long-term plan for success, especially in terms of their online community. I’m doing this because I care. I do not have a personal vendetta against the company, I’m not anti-Fury. I actually have a deep wanting to see this game thrive so I can buy and participate in a successful product.

Online communities come in all forms, shapes and sizes. It can be anything from a discussion board population built around discussing viable East Coast wedding planners, to websites built ground-up based on user participation ala Youtube.

In this specific case, we’re talking about a company’s attempt to build an online community following for their upcoming game, a game which almost establishes a new genre. We can show you that it’s not how great of a concept you have, but how you approach it.

The game I’m talking about is Fury. Fury is an online role-playing game revolving uniquely around player-versus-player online combat. If I had to break it down real quick, it would be the result if the player-versus-player action of Counter-Strike was combined with sword-shield-spell and character development aspect of Dungeons and Dragons.

This game was announced some time ago and is due for release in the fourth quarter this year. This game is supposed to be THE game that competitive role-playing-gamers are going to buy and play with their friends. I am in their target demographic, of all people, this is THE game concept that I’ve been looking around for. I mentioned that to let you know, I’m writing this blog because it’s almost a shame to see this happen to a game I really want to play, not because I hate the game.

What They Can’t Change

It’s all well and dandy to critique them on every single aspect of their approach, but why critique them on things they can’t fix. Here’s a list of things Fury can’t change:

Game Developer and Publisher not well-known - Believe it or not, how well people know you is a strong factor that can subconsciously affect whether you’re going to be interested in the game in the first place. The developers and publishers, can’t change this, they can’t change their previous work experience. People are naturally going to be attracted by games put out by Blizzard and NCSoft then My-Portfolio-Is-On-MiniClip. Being nothing from nowhere means you need to try extra hard for exposure. I’ve got to hand it to Fury, they have a great concept going for them.
Basic Game Concept - Fury has a great game concept, bring competitive, teamwork oriented PvP play to those that enjoy some sort of character development.
Natural Appeal to the RPG Player - RPG players are likely to follow the development of and buy RPG games. The games that have completely pulled in a different type of player are few and far between. You don’t normally see hordes of First-Person shooters lining up to buy the newest Real-Time Strategy. I’m sure it happens, but typically, RPG games means an attraction by RPG players.
Natural Appeal to the Competitive PvP Player - Competitiveness, just like someone’s game-type preference, doesn’t grow overnight. You don’t suddenly froth at the mouth for the death of other internet gamers after playing The Sims.

If you think I’m making things up, the Fury website even states: If you don’t like PvP in a role playing game, you won’t like Fury.

Now, based on this, you have to admit, they are targeting a relatively small demographic. Not only do you have to be a competitive gamer, but you have to have some sort of interest in character development. If you didn’t, you’d be playing Counter-Strike. As an unknown game developer, this is going to be a tough obstacle to overcome. Because unlike player-versus-environment games, a game based entirely on player participation needs to have alot of participants. Sounds redundant, but it’s true.

How Online Communities Work

On an online community for a game works has communication happening between participants both online (on forums and voicechat) and offline (in real life, in the school hallway, at lunch time). Here are some points to consider:

Negative word gets around quick, online and offline
Viral marketing is the strongest tool that can make or break a community based on its number of participants
An online community needs to be nursed or it will feel neglected

Now let’s move onto the fun bit.

What Fury Did Wrong

The unchangeable setbacks mentioned above should cause them to push other aspects of the game. Instead, relatively simple to avoid problems are repelling potential community members.

High Computer Requirements - Not only does having high computer requirements drive away people that don’t actually meet the computer specs, but even if I had an incredible computer and my best friend can’t run the game, I’m less likely to purchase the game. It’s not uncommon to have a group of friends (or clan or guild) swarm to a game to play it together, but having some people able to play, and some people can’t, creates a problem, and drives away potential players and your community. The High Computer Requirements are the result of the game developers of Fury choosing to go with a recent release of the Unreal Engine. Poor idea.
Early Public Exposure to a Very Incomplete Product - You may think that releasing betas allows the community to play together and build a relationship with the game. And you’re right. But first impressions matter most. Joe Video-Gamer probably doesn’t even know the definition of a game in pre-alpha. He may think it’s a game that didn’t go through meticulous testing, instead of the reality: an incomplete game.
Examples of what happens when Joe Video-Gamer plays a pre-pre-alphas:
- Joe plays Fury and notices that the spell and character animations are incomplete. Not only does Joe THINKS this is a poor game, but tells all his friends that it’s a poor game.
- Joe plays Fury with a computer meeting the specifications, but his experience is very laggy. Same as the above. He THINKS it’s a poor game, and doesn’t forget to tell his friends.
- Joe plays Fury and gets bored and doesn’t know that all the content wasn’t implemented. Same scenario.
After any of the events listed above, Joe feels less motivation to spend the hours downloading the newest alpha version to play. Hence, Joe slowly and silently finds something else to do. Note that this isn’t always the case. People do stick around, but you should think about your losses, not your unconditional followers.
Monthly Payments - Just when you think it couldn’t be worse. Monthly payments are added to the list. I can understand that the developers need to feed their family, but this is the wrong way to go about it. If Monthly Payments are required to be competitive, the people that just don’t have the cash to hand it over to the company are excluded from your community. If you argue that the Monthly Payments are NOT required to be competitive, then for what reasons did you expect people to give you money for?

Conclusion

There are too many bottlenecks so far that prevent a large community from evolving around Fury. Your customer almost NEEDS to:

Have a liking RPG’s
Be a competitive PvP Player
Have a good computer
Not be bothered that monthly fees can be present, and that those that pay them, will have more content (or whatever) then he has
Have a strong wanting to play the game enough to overlook the quality of the pre-alphas
Have friends or guildmates that share his same traits, if not, be very comfortable playing a competitive game without knowing anyone playing it

That is a SMALL TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC for newer genre developed by a newer company. Without any changes from the developers, I don’t see Fury going very far. Fury has the potential to be an amazing game, but they’ve just done some things that have hindered their success so far. It is not too late, and the best thing that can happen is that the developers realize their mistakes and rectify them before it’s too late.Just thought I’d mention again that I did this because I care. I do not have a personal vendetta against the company, I’m not anti-Fury. I actually have a deep wanting to see this game thrive so I can buy and participate in a successful product.

Visit the Fury website.

*Edit* A more recent article discusses how Guild Wars built an online game community, the right way.