So What Happened to Star Wars Galaxies?

I have not been on the inside of that meltdown. tales of pirates Most of what I know came from a close reading of news reports about what happened and conversations with other games researchers, such as USC’s Doug Thomas or UW’s Kurt Squire. I am sure there are readers who could tell us more about what happened than I can and I would welcome them to share their experiences here. I prepared some reflections about what happened for our Convergence Culture Consortium partners newsletter last January. 2moons

The tensest and most difficult moments in SWG’s development — and they came often — were when we had to remove something that players really liked. Usually, buy maplestory mesos it was against our own wishes, lord of the rinds gold because of time constraints or (rarely) orders from on high. But we couldn’t tell the players the real reasons sometimes. buy wow gold That sucked, frankly, because the open relationship really did matter. As often as we could, we laid everything bare. world of warcraf

Some have since decided that it was listening to the players too much that caused some of the design problems with SWG. maple story I am not sure I agree. swg credits If anything, I think that many subsequent problems came from not listening enough, Star Wars Galaxies credits or not asking questions in advance of changes. hellgate london Walking a mile in the players’ shoes is a difficult trick to pull off even if you have the best of intentions. 2moons

In any case, I think I don’t agree with that philosophy. lord of the rinds I’d rather have prospective players on a journey with the team, hellgate london than have them be a passive group marketed to. wow gold Yes, they will suffer the ups and downs, and see the making of the sausage… but these days, maplestory that’s getting to be an accepted thing in creative fields. There’s not much to gain, swg credits to my mind, in having the creators sitting off on a pedestal somewhere — people fall from pedestals, and pedestals certainly will not survive contact with Live operation of a virtual world. tales of pirates Instead, I’d rather the customers know the creators as people who make mistakes, so that when one happens, they are more likely to be forgiven or understood. lotro gold

Earlier this week, world of warcraf Next Generation published a short excerpt from my much longer discussion of Star Wars Gallaxies and user-generated content in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. The publication seems to have prompted game designer and theorist Raph Koster to blog about what he learned by adopting a more collaborationist approach to his fans. guild wars money Here’s some of what he had to say: lord of the rinds

These days, maple story it’s accepted wisdom that you don’t reveal a feature until it’s done, hellgate london so as to guarantee that you never let the players down. Of course, GW gold even finished features sometimes fall out for one reason or another…

One of the challenges of academic publishing is that the world can move out from under year in that long, long period of time between when you finish a book and when it hits the shelves. In the case of Convergence Culture, one of the biggest shifts was the meltdown which has occured in the relations between the players and creators of Star Wars Galaxies, much of which really hit the fan last December. I still think what the book says about Star Wars Galaxies — Raph Koster, Star Wars Galaxies credits as the comments above suggest, remains a leading advocate for a more collaborationist relationship between producers and consumers; his approach does contrast with at least some of the policies that Lucas has applied elsewhere in dealing with other aspects of Star Wars fandom and so Star Wars represents a rich case study of the uncertain and unstable relations between media franchises and their consumers. If anything, these contrasts are even easier to see when we see how shifts in company leadership impacted the community around this particular game. maplestory mesos

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