Hubris in game design

I'm interested in discussing this without knocking developers. I want to understand the disconnect between players and designers. Is it hubris?

I'll get to CoH2 in a minute, but first... Diablo 3.

I loved Diablo 2 (never really played the original). D2 for me defined everything that made ARPGs awesome - stability of battle.net, collectibles, cool classes, the horadric cube, PvP, random dungeons, variable character builds...

Then along comes D3. The lead designer was carved from a giant, impenetrable block of hubris. Variable char builds? Nah. Twitchy modern gamers need an identical menu so they can reconfigure their character all the time accessing the same suite of skills. PvP? Eventually, but first we need THE AUCTION HOUSE!

The AH was to D3 what DLC Commanders are to CoH2. You buy and sell items and Blizzard takes a cut. Some people spend real money. Economics 101 - the AH killed D3. Why collect items and convert / pimp them like in D2 with the cube when you can just grind and buy?

Item inflation killed the game. On the forums Blizz were told, repeatedly, not to do it for obvious (to those not working at Blizz)reasons. They did it.

Less classes. Identikit skill trees. The Auction House.

Don't get me started on the permanent online requirement

Hubris. Hubris, everywhere. When the original dev of D2 made some noise he was machinegunned online in a deeply disrespectful way by the current devs.

What happened? Sales declined. D3 is dead, we wailed. I got 100 friend requests a week from gold spammers. My character felt and looked like everyone else's.

The dev team stuck their fingers in their ears and went nyah nyah nyah!!!

Then guess what happened? When the expansion was planned they parachuted in a new, more conciliatory lead designer. He's being paid a fortune to do what was fucking obvious from day one --- kill the Auction House. He admitted some mistakes. Things, if they didn't get better, got less bad.

Is any of this sounding familiar? Nickel-and-diming suits, greedy bastards with no understanding of game design, pressing revenue models on designers who are forced to walk the plank with the customers?

I'd like the financial and business side of games development to come down here, into the cyber-mud of the community, and justify their bone-headed, fucktarded decisions. I want them to take some flak. I want them stripped of their hubris.

TL;DR - what's wrong with most modern videogames is obvious to everyone except the greedy bastards in the executive wash-room.

Am I wrong?

First it seems not logical as you need to invest more money to acquire a new customer then to hold customer you already got. But i think the idea is like this: Someone who played D2 or CoH1 will play D3 or CoH2 anyway because it´s Diablo and Company of Heroes. So we can ignore there demands and focus on how we get more people to buy this game by making it simpler and more casual (easier to play means more people get it = more money). And of course the just look for the next quarterly figures not the ongoing business. Look at TW, CoD, CoH, you mentioned D, what ever game you like. It´s all the same. They know they developed a bad game but the hide this fact as best as they can and create a giant marketing hype to make the people buy the game. This goes on and on and on till the franchise is finally dead. See C&C.

It's also about having a de facto monopoly. If you want a game like CoH you don´t have that much choice. Same goes for CoD. It's expensive and risky to develop a AAA game. They know it and they use the position they are in. I would do the same i guess.

I wouldn't call it hubris. But yes, people who make business decisions often don't understand their consumer at all.

Funnily enough, business meetings resemble a lot of threads you can find on this forum. People arguing, pushing their ideas and dismissing other suggestions. A lot of opinions fly around and it gets quite heated.

In the end decision is made by a judge, who doesn't necessary understand what other people are talking in the grand context of things and they definitely don't come to forums like these to see what their customers are saying.

See Noun for example, can communicate what the community is saying. But he doesn't have authority to actually make decisions. Whether his recomendation will be dismissed or taken in consideration really depends if the decision maker truly grasps importance of what he or she is hearing.

So yes, Business decisions often are crystal clear to you but they are very hard to grasp for someone who doesn't really play the game nor can really relate to you and your needs and wants.
Hubris, its bit harsh.

^ Not all the time. The D3 decisions, for example, were sheer hubris. The COH2 decision around lobbies and some of the DLC comes across as hubristic.

You make a bad call but plough on regardless due to pride. Hubris.


As for the community - dammit the something-for-nothing types piss me off - $70 for a game they want supported for six years with stable MP? Those guys are dicks. There's not many of them, but they are out there (digital generation 'Y' content is free and all that).

OTOH those of us making sensible non-P2W suggestions around DLC are ignored.

First it seems not logical as you need to invest more money to acquire a new customer then to hold customer you already got. But i think the idea is like this: Someone who played D2 or CoH1 will play D3 or CoH2 anyway because it´s Diablo and Company of Heroes. So we can ignore there demands and focus on how we get more people to buy this game by making it simpler and more casual (easier to play means more people get it = more money). And of course the just look for the next quarterly figures not the ongoing business. Look at TW, CoD, CoH, you mentioned D, what ever game you like. It´s all the same. They know they developed a bad game but the hide this fact as best as they can and create a giant marketing hype to make the people buy the game. This goes on and on and on till the franchise is finally dead. See C&C.

I think C&C 3 and Kanes Wrath were excellent games. Just they were not polished enough for a release (balancing was bad) and the engine's netcode sucks... SAGE engine already sucked on Generals and BFME series. If they had spend some months to improve its netcode and core balance from the start the games would've been way more successful. The designs were very nicely done, and the gameplay is pretty smooth.

RA 3 also did some stuff well, but they overdid unnecessary stuff (like the RA girls being super whores) which broke with Red Alert spirit. C&C 4 was crap, though.

It's also about having a de facto monopoly. If you want a game like CoH you don´t have that much choice. Same goes for CoD. It's expensive and risky to develop a AAA game. They know it and they use the position they are in. I would do the same i guess.

Agree. I think that those people tried to reinvent the game. Which is NOT what you want to do with a sequel.

What do people expect from a sequel? Usually they want the same core gameplay, prettied up in new graphics, maybe a new setting (like moving from ww2 to cold war) and with sensible changes that will enhance playability. For CoH 2 this may have been stuff like weather/atmosphere, prettier engine, more maps by default, and a nice cmapaign.

What they finally released was a drastically altered core game in prettier graphics with a very strange anti-war campaign and p2win commanders.

That's simply not a sequel. It's a new game.