Jestertrek's Reddit AMA

Communications Center General Discussion
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A relevant comment about IT developers in general:

I’ve seen a lot of IT projects over the years. One thing I learned is that developers rarely have any real understanding of their users or the business environment for their project. And that this is true even if they are actual users.

It’s not the same thing, but it could perhaps be compared with the fact than an experienced EVE player can never simulate being a new player again. They know too much, so things which are very difficult for the new player are obvious and simple for an experienced player with a 500K SP character.

In this case (EVE requirements management), it sounds like the Developers themselves aren’t the problem: the company is probably missing the kind of people who can manage the project(s) properly.
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An IT scenario (real, but I have to be vague due to confidentiality requirements):

I’ve literally seen the developers “destroy” a very successful project (100-odd dedicated developers plus IT Operations staff) by subverting their project management and business people, convincing them to make the project “developer friendly”. They started looking too far into the future, preparing to build an IT “work of art”, and forgot to give the investors the functions they wanted and needed to generate income and profit.

Endgame: the project was moved to a different development company and a different IT Service company, badly damaging the companies that originally developed and operated the system.

The system is still very successful, the developers have nice CVs (they weren’t even very good at development, put it’s a high-status project) … but the both companies they worked for and the IT services company took very serious beatings.

The problem: the developers were good enough to keep the project alive and moving forward, but … they got their own people to approve “modernizing” the existing system instead of implementing key functions the system owners / investors wanted.

The developer-side issue is perspective: engineers want to built cool stuff with the latest technology. In IT it means they always want to re-engineer rather than deliver new functions, so they’re naturally not very interested in the user perspective. Even, as in this particular case, when they’re all users. It’s also unusual for developers to understand the investor perspective, but that’s easier to understand and accept.

In this particular case, the management-side issue was that the organization wouldn’t hire the right kind of project management and business leadership to “keep the developers honest”. This rarely works even with much smaller projects, but it’s very dangerous with more than 15-odd developers (two + teams).

Whose fault? Not the developers: they always do this if they’re allowed to. It was definitely a management mistake: they let the “lunatics take over the asylum” instead of running it properly. The couldn’t see it either, even afterwards. You could look at it as a “Dunning-Kruger” problem with a group, with normal levels of denial afterwards

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That’s been an interesting read. Some things just resoante with what I already was thinking, others have been new, like what was CCP thinking about “that person”.

I disagree with some things, though. I don’t think CCP Seagull did a good job. Maybe the sluggish development of her Rubicon roadmap isn’t her fault, but certainly it was her decissions what ended backburning everything that’s not about nullsec playstyle.

And here we are, in a sinking ship that’s going nowhere while nobody outside cares. EVE the undead MMO, just you can’t run its server on a PC like those keeping alive Ultima or Everquest. And of course, Ultima and EQ are pretty much PvE games with a NPC economy…

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23

I found the details on Erotica 1 rather interesting.

Erotica 1 was the biggest donator to CODE at that time, and I remember CODE blaming Jestertrek for him being banned and going on a rage ganking spree against new bro’s and they said that they would tell them that Jestertrek would SRP them because it was his fault.

This says a lot about certain CODE players, but also about CCP’s attitude to the more edgy player groups in maintaining that edginess which in spite of its bad points does create a more dangerous feel to the game. I think CCP Falcon played it correctly in terms of what Eve is and having concern on where this type of play could lead, but it was a shame that Jestertrek got the blame for it by the more edgy players.

I read the other points he made and meshed in with what I was thinking about CCP at the time. The dominion trailer to me was one of the best trailers ever made and to hear what happened was a bit of a shock to me.

PS I knew who Erotica 1 was before Jestertrek posted about him.

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game got bought by asian publishers, time to cash out bois

In reference to dust514 being put on console. Further reference to CCP being utterly clueless.

Yes. Quite a lot of times, actually.

CCP was terrified that if they did DUST 514 as a PC release, EVE would die, everyone would move to DUST, and they’d be no better off. We heard this a couple of times

Actually reading most of this thread, it’s amazing how many coffee tables the devs have tripped over and still kept the community.

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You are right 100%, movies have:
actors
camermans
scenarists
producers
directors…

What CCP have? DEVELOPERS ??? :expressionless:

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To be fair to CCP, they’ve had other specialists (like their Economist), and they will have different roles in Development too.

The gap I suspect they have is at the difficult interface between the technical specialists who are responsible for medium- to long-term technical strategy, the game architect(s), and business strategy

In general, roles like those cannot be done by the same person. Limited exceptions exist (e.g. Minecraft’s Notch did it for a while) but it’s very rare.

CCP seems to have made a business management error: they missed the point at which they needed to stop hiding behind the “sandbox principle” and get someone experienced working on Game Architecture. You can’t just tell a senior coder they’re an architect and have them work effectively - it’s a profession, not a title.

Now, belatedly, they’re taking baby-steps towards modernizing EVE without breaking it. But I don’t get the sense that they have a viable game architecture strategy yet, and they really need one.

BTW - much bigger and richer game companies have done (or not done) the same things. Tinkering with an existing game (e.g like adding WH space) has to be a lot easier than making fundamental changes in what should be offered, or the kind(s) of customer the game should be aimed at.

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Edit: this was posted in response to a post (now deleted) that used the word “failed” in a way that’s consistent with this response.
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I think “failed” is going too far. EVE is still a good game with many loyal customers, many paying customers, and a reasonably stable customer base.

I think Hilmar missed the point at which EVE needed to be re-architected to keep growing.

This has probably cost the VC’s, and any others with a financial interest in EVE, a lot of money, because a company that’s adding customers or revenue fast is often worth a lot more than one that’s stable on both, even if the first is losing money, and the second is reasonably profitable.

But other people (notably the “bittervets”) often claim that of the new players that try EVE, almost 100% of those who would stay long-term do so, which implies there are approximately as many players as there could be. Naturally I believe I’m right and they are wrong, but it’s hard, perhaps impossible, to prove it.

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I understand the point of a business not listening to its users and I, in part, agree with that.

I business shouldn’t be distracted with the wants of its users, which can be fragmented. Especially if they have a single goal/roadmap they are working towards.

That being said, when I talk about listening to its players, I don’t mean drop everything you have and make what the community wants. I’ve read a lot of the stuff in the Features & Ideas parts of the forums, there is a lot of crap in there. What I think makes sense, is to use the community sentiment to assess different aspects of the game and evaluate the games features. According to the AMA, some devs seem to stubbornly implement features, without really considering any of the received feedback.

Combined with how the AMA talks about devs favoring new feature developments, I can see the reason why stuff like FW or re-visiting missions, seems to have such a low priority to fix.

In the end, I totally agree with both you and @Commander_Kane. We vote with our wallets. I just try not to include this in my posts, cause honestly, who cares that I’ve stopped subbing.

Maybe my initial post was poorly worded. I didn’t really mean implementing whatever the users wants, but more using experts and users to assess features and generate data to help make better judgements.

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  1. Eve operated on promisses where old players and sahddy bussines exploit stream of curious new players. IRL I am working with IT professionals off all generations and new one so-called millenials know wery much that “Eve is not good game” and do not wat even to try it. Today new players in Eve is excess not a rule :frowning_face:

  2. Hillmar and VC got game concept which was short thermed and did not adjust it to new times and new generations of players, they just spend a time tried to adjust old concept and sell their VR “expertise” :frowning_face:

  3. Old player had very hard time to become what they are today and can not understand that today gamers have thousands different games where can achive simmilar or better results withouth so much hard times invested … :frowning_face:

Eve do not have much possibilities, I can list several other big structural problems but they wil just hide and ban this post …

My main field of interested are people: what can they see, deliberately overlook, accidentally overlook, how they act and how they react in situation like that.

My old teche from elementary school told me: a fool learns from his mistakes, clever on others

Aand here I am :popcorn:

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Maybe it only needs to look around and see what is going on and what is boost. Anthem developers done sam mistake as CCP, they have neglected experiences and customs and have become totally ruined because they are trying to re-invent a wheel on their own way …

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CCP doesn’t know, CCP doesn’t care, CCP doesn’t understand their own game.

CCP stopped being CCP back in 2008, when the last of the OG CCP were replaced with caretakers.

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So much negativity

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What Jester doesn’t seem to get, is that CCP did learn after that period. They do the analysis, they crunch the numbers, it’s just that he, like most players, still thinks of an eve that was, according to the old paradigm of emergant behaviour.

CCP decided, under a bit of duress (infamous Vegas meet some will remember), that this kind of eve would have to die and be replaced while keeping it going. Replaced by a different kind of paradigm.

To make a long story short, that old eve had a hole in the bottom CCP in its form then could not fix because that wasn’t really their child anymore. Instead they had to cater to and chase after what players were making it, and that did not match internal concepts, dynamics, ego, targets and - sad to say - competence requirements.

So, Summer of Rage. That nailed it. CCP’s venture management decided it was enough. What followed next was classic parallel management.

To make another long story short, Jester seemed to think that CCP was running eve. Instead, CCP was setting up to rebuild and retarget eve. Not on the foundation of emergent gameplay. But on different concepts, under internal guises of chasing future, covering behinds, awesomeness vindicated, financial variables and “input” from CCP’s venture “partners”.

Think Star Trek Online, as a baseline. This during tons of experiments and projects. Some of which CCP’s head guys used in internal politics to (once again, CCP has a beginning) clean house.

In a nutshell, CCP is acutely aware of conditions and metrics, very much in tune with them. What some signal about is just exactly what CCP want and require.

I do wonder sometimes how hard it can be, witnessing the signs from the inside or even semi-inside to not adjust perception.

This is not the CCP people think it is. Hilmar knows exactly what he is doing. CCP knows exactly how to boil frogs and reinvent the virtual country eve once was. The only thing that allows CCP to follow the roadmap is the belief of customers in the now long dead foundation concepts of eve.

Jester says CCP has to get back to EVE welcoming other types of game play and creating a capability for them to take place. Well, CCP is done with that. Has been since that infamous flight from Vegas. The Seagul was shot down. After first clipping its wings.

Also, cannibalism, that was internal marketing. Dust 514 wasn’t a threat to eve, the problem was a venture /finance type. Loss of face.

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We agree on this.

But …

1th mistake was when the CCP allowed the environment to see it. No matter how many new project sthey started no one has seen CCP as an attractive start-up and IPO. That moment when CCP lose “competence requirements” VCs lost their money.

2nd mistake: 2004th was loong time ago and gaming community common consciousness has accepted new ideas and standards. Whole gaming world went forward and CCP stayed behind as one trick pony. That burn their value to the ground.

Now they have only IP from 2004th and potential link to Chinese market. All other are unnecessary costs.

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VC made decent return actually. The problem was the financial crisis in Iceland, CCP hiring the kitchen sinks with families and putting those in places of awesomeness. Following that, CCP demonstrated to be unable to do anything really. This is a harsh thing to say, especially with devs reading, but every project failed. Management, ego, office politics, segregated communications & office community, heck even internal petty drama and some devs who were less equal just wanting to be amazing and slamming their stamp on things making it their own. Without any competence or affinity.

Jester in this regard dances around the issue. Understandably so.

Another mistake he makes is in regards to Mittani. CCP could never have gotten Hilmar’s roadmap through, never have turned the CSM into a marketing instrument, without Mittani. Mittens recognised the issues at play inside CCP, and turned that into an agenda. But Hilmar was smarter. With everyone pissed, and most trying to take out Jon Lander’s narrative internally, Hilmar recognised early on that CSM as a stakeholder would a) prevent his agenda and b) force CCP to actually plug the hole in the bottom of the ship.

Hilmar identified Mittens as kompromat, basically. At one fanfest he even spoke about that. Quite funny, but also quite serious. In a nutshell, Mittens, without figuring this out, did what Hilmar needed him to do. Introduce social psychology of perverse triggers under guise of a new concept marketing, thus killing CSM as a stakeholder construct. Thus enabling CCP’s politics to be business as usual, and set the stage to boil frogs, for that grand yet disconnected roadmap of killing the emergent dynamic eve, asset sweating transition towards an ST:O eve.

CCP as a studio is now just a subsiduary. They have nothing, but the studio. Talking about the rights and properties is not my place here.

They were not bought for eve on the old foundation concepts, but for the new ones. And because Iceland has a funny bit of reach through economic & treaty status, but that too is a different story. And on the side, it is an enormously valuable experience base. How to kill, rebuild the corpse, while still keeping it working for you, into something easier to manage.

In the end it all boils down to historic trauma’s, gaps in competence and customer stupidity really. But it works for CCP, demonstrably.

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Whats a Jestertrek and why do i care?

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This is one of the things I disagree with him on. I like skill injectors personally and I do think they give a way for newer players to catch up in this game instead of always being stuck behind. Ultimately I do think they are necessary.

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Makes me sad, too. :frowning:

Of particular concern are the bits where he describes how CCP has concluded that regardless of their level of investment in EVE, the return is always the same. AND the bits about how something changed at CCP in 2015 or 2016 that has taken their bulk of their focus OFF of EVE.

These are disheartening facts, because it paints the picture that EVE is sinking ship and that CCP has essentially acknowledged that (internally at least).

While these facts may require a restructuring of the flow of capital into EVE’s development, I certainly don’t think EVE is a lost cause. I really, really wish CCP would heed the outcry from the playerbase:

Restore and expand the sandbox. Restore and expand the tools of the player to fundamentally drive the game. The result will be new players, more growth, and additional revenue. Do it, CCP, before the hour is too late. You have, at best, 4 more years before the game is no longer redeemable.

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There’s a common myth in VC, where equal return is a condition of product development. It isn’t. In the sense, it is a benchmark within product development, but it is a variable, conditional to management.

CCP is correct in its observation that return of investment is same or similar. But that, obviously, is a derivative state. One which all too often becomes part of corporate narratives. In other words, as the metric is affirmed, thus the observation. The conclusion however should note that this is not a development derivative, but one of management.

This bleeds through in every part of CCP’s internal dogma. Not Invented Here. Resource Cost. There’s a shocking amount of rather mundane management challenges, which, left in place, consolidate - after which people tend to attach vested interests and adverse behaviour - with the best intentions, but with long term effects on routines and narratives, even identity concepts within a corporate entity.

Add to this the history of social psychology of interaction & exposure trauma, and CCP’s management focus is understandable. Problem is, it also prevents them from engaging on accountability for that hole in the bottom of the ship. Not my place to provide the complete details, I’m sure at some point somewhere in the industry an interview will surface, but this was mentioned as a big reason for two of CCP’s former VC relations to make their respective decisions. It’s not something often commented on, it’s something you confirm, then quietly consider in interaction, prior to considering scouted options.

In a nutshell: eve’s dead, be quiet about it and believe while CCP boils the rest of the frogs. Incidentally, I think Jester’s signal recognition of CCP and NPC economic constructs is valid. But there’s another which comes before any such door to go through, should the human (not account) population drop below levels required for behavioural sustainability (like the economy, someone should make another fun emotion for “economic council”).

Look on the bright side, you get an ST:O adaptation of eve, in a way. The emergent dynamic sandbox is dead, but you can buy tons of stuff which prevents CCP from keeping eyes on the underlying metrics and indicators.

But please, don’t ever think that CCP is willing to listen to its customers. Devs listen. A company is something else entirely. Heck, most of the time that doesn’t even listen to the devs who get the dependancies. CSM will be further tied to its intended role of Quisling, boxed in, for marketing and the odd bit of low hanging fruit. The show goes on, the road is that of the roadmap upstairs. Nothing else matters.

And you know what, in a way it is ironic. CCP has grown up to become a “real” company that way, just as Hilmar mentioned years and years ago. It’s just, well, not its own company, but a subsiduary studio construct. Which is fine. As long as it meets targets. And now those are firm, and a lot more strict.

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Now you lost it big time!
Please before posting start to read real literature, let’s say:
Peter Thiels, The Diversity Myth or Zero to One