AoC and the Devil’s Advocate Approach

The Launch of AoC is fascinating. In the MMORPG scene, you observe a Tripel AAA titel launch every three - four year or so. Following that Logic, WoW (which was launched at late 2004) was the last one. Nevertheless, 2008 (or probably the beginning of 2009) will be a different year. WaR, Wrath of the Lich King, Aion, Stargate Worlds and The Chronicles of Spellborn - have high ambitions. All of them will be launched in the coming year.

There a lot of growing issues which surrounds AoC. The Game play VS Graphics (As keen and Graev's mentioned in their last post). What is best, to launch a game with an uber graphics or to ease the requirements and hope to attract more players.

The Performance issues is another matter. Another question Is There a Miracle patch, and how come Funcom needs a Miracle Patch few days just before the launch. More questions rose regarding the world. Is it really open? Is it more linear than what the players expected? There was a fierce debate regarding the open beta. Was it wise to use unpatched client beta? everyone knows ( even Funcom) that public beta is a Marketing and PR tool to accumulate new gamers.

I probably didn't touch many issues which were brought by many Advocated players in the last weeks. I found myself surfing the officaisl forums of the game and MMORPG website forums in the last weeks, only to discover that still many many subjects haven't been answered.

An idea pops into your mind after so many unsolved issues, Did Funcom used the Devil's Advocate Method. Devil's advocate is someone who takes a position for the sake of argument. This process can be used to test the quality of the original argument and identify weaknesses in its structure.

What that's got to do with Funcom? A lot. The launching of AoC is like any other technological project. I won't describe the workflow of a typical technology project. A lot of reading stuff regarding the matter can be found all over the web. Still, one cannot ask himself what would happen if Funcom had taken the Devil's advocate appraoch. I guess they would avoid a lot of the critisim which was pointed to them by a lot of gamers lately.

Practically you can take each of the common issues I mentioned earlier in my post and use the Devil's advocate approach on it. Imagine to yourself an imaginary board meeting at Funcom offices (four years ago…). “So guys”, says Gaute Godager, the AoC director, “we need to decide. Are we going to make a game for the High end machines and astonishing graphics or make some compremises? Offer mainstream graphics, none which you could describe at the next Generation MMO. Nevertheless, it would be playble by many”. “Listen Gaute”, says Erling Ellingsen (AKA – the devil's advocte). Do you know what is the main characteristic which defines all of the top MMO's? The one's that shine in the sales charts are the one's that not require from the gamers to upgrade their machines and to have an uber Rig?”.

Now only history will tell what would happen to AoC. But I'm pretty sure that if Funcom had used the Deviles advocate method in the game life cycle development – they would be pretty sure avoid a lot of the significant issues that we see now been raised by many critics.