I once would have said yes, but I would now say no--because I now do not think the bugs, instability and design problems in SWG were dependent upon a rushed launchI think instead they're predicated on an overly complex, fussy, baroque design and on live team management problems, including numbers of staff on the development team, problems that another two months or ten months would not have fixedPlus it's clear that some of the people who tried SWG and didn't like it would never have liked it because of some fundamental design decisions it made about how to instantiate Star Wars in MMOG formIt also raises some interesting non-design problemsIt looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term.  

The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn't HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levelsBuy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Goldwill keep your high powerOn the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened

Other kinds of (creative) human activity vanish from its radar screen

This is an argument that forms part of a chapter I've written for a volume I'm co-editing  with Sandra Braman (Command Lines) that is currently under review, and there the specific example is Second Life and the challenges that the varieties of user content therein make to the multiple ideas about content held by the different teams within Linden LabBut GDC led me to see this claim as more applicable here as wellThey looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at usIt was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developersAnd there are huge gaps in what we don't knowWhere is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from itI hope the audience did as well

But overall, I like to think that the attendance demonstrates that developers are interested in what academics might be able to tell them (again I will point out: no fruit was thrown)And all week, I talked with developers who were interested in what was going on with research, from the smallest to the largest companiesMaybe the issue is the "larger" communityIt's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that levelBut I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going onI don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to beBut then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet

The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.

Would Asheron's Call 2 have double the subscribers if it had another two or three months of development before launch? Again, it may be that the flaws of the game were far deeper than early bugs, and not correctable through extended development.

Players make MMORPG environments tick because 1) they roleplay (at least sometimes), 2) they create and participate in guilds, fansites and other in-game and out-of-game social networks, 3) they provide agonistic engagement (espin P2P worlds), and 4) most importantly -- they're simply present to hear, see, trade, and be included or excludedThe presence of others affects the play experience in many ways.

Sources : My Web Game