…with the bathwater and all that jazz.
Expect some very crappy and buggy patches/content to start coming out of the halls of EA Mythic in the very near future:
Speculative information is coming down the vine via Joystiq that Electronic Arts’ new cost-cutting initiative has “cost” Warhammer Online roughly 21 customer support staff, half of its QA department and all of it’s playtesting group. According to EA, they currently has no plans to make any additional cuts — although that doesn’t mean we aren’t worried about it. And when asked about the future of the game and it’s team, EA was unable to give any answers to Joystiq.
So…EA has decided to do things the Fast and Cheap route, which usually means the product coming out of EA Mythic will not be Good. I refer to something I deeply believe in as a Q/A, Verification Engineer myself: The Project Triangle:
You are given the options of Fast, Good and Cheap, and told to pick any two. Here Fast refers to the time required to deliver the product, Good is the quality of the final product, and Cheap refers to the total cost of designing and building the product. This triangle reflects the fact that the three properties of a project are interrelated, and it is not possible to optimise all three – one will always suffer. In other words you have three options:
- Design something quickly and to a high standard, but then it will not be cheap.
- Design something quickly and cheaply, but it will not be of high quality.
- Design something with high quality and cheaply, but it will take a long time.
LOL…I just saw this one for the four S’s of dating:
Girls: Single, Sane, Sexy and Smart– Pick any three.
Heh…but I’m getting off track. Where was I? Oh yes…how much EA is screwing it’s customers for short term cost savings.
It’s understandable. Times are getting tough for quite a few people out there, and EA may not be in the place they need to be to weather this storm that is hitting the markets right now. But, getting rid of your quality control for an MMO is not the smartest thing to do. I’m sure what the EA bean counters don’t understand that when you put an MMO out there, you now become a service provider. So EA is saving up front, but now they may end up loosing revenue because gamers tend to not tolerate a buggy experience. Again, how many of us would continue paying monthly fees for a Satellite or cell phone service with crappy reception or quality? Not very many. We’d just go to another service provider (*cough* WoW/LOTRO/EQ2 *cough*) that does fully test their content before they give it to us.
I’ve stated before, or at least hinted that I think WAR is on a good path to becoming something people will want to check out once EA Mythic “figure out who they are” as an MMO. Now, they have a different problem that will now come to haunt them: Trying to figure out how to control “crappy quality” word of mouth from sinking their game.
Nope. I don’t get a good feeling about this at all.
D out.
Entries (RSS)
January 20th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Testing is often one of the first places hit with the hopes that developers can test their own code. Some do, most don’t and more of them have no idea how to test.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:36 am
@Smacken: yes. Wolves watching the chickens comes to mind.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:01 am
“very crappy and buggy patches/content to start”
Start? I thought most of them already were?
January 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am
[...] over at Common Sense Gamer picked up on a story at Joystiq about layoffs at Mythic. Apparently they are laying off folks in [...]
January 20th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Turbine laid off a few QA people recently too…
January 21st, 2009 at 12:17 am
Not that I’m in favour of layoffs of any sort (especially in QA for an MMO…), let’s play devil’s advocate here:
If Mythic is told by EA to let go of some staff, would you prefer it came from the development/design team or from the QA team? Let’s be honest here — QA and playtesting will be the expendable areas in a game of this scale. I think it helps to look at the situation from both sides, as shitty as it is.
-nick / reroller
January 21st, 2009 at 8:11 am
@Nick: yeah…I know where you’re coming from. Here’s another good one: Do you really want designers testing their own code? heh. Really, I think design should feel some of the pain when it comes to layoffs in the general sense. If you’re going to scale down your capability, you might as well take a balanced approach.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Being a software developer, I’ve used the triangle myself, although I’ve always heard it referred to as Time, Money, and Quality. The company I work for recently went through a round of layoffs as well where nearly half of our sales staff got axed. Stressful times no matter what industry you’re in.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
@Nick/Darren – As a developer, I can say I do some testing of my own code, but it’s not the same as having a dedicated QA staff. It’s analogous to why writers don’t edit their own work.
February 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] not going to say a word. Not a word I tell you : oystiq is reporting today that Mythic Entertainment has been hit by another round of [...]