Arden: a Tragedy of Errors

disclaimer: I want to make absolutely clear that I am not suggesting Multiverse is a bad platform. In fact, the whole goal of my article was to show how Arden *misrepresents* what Multiverse and virtual world technology can do.

Shakespeare MMOG: No-Brainer

So let us say you are a grant officer at the MacArthur Foundation and you are approached by a well-reviewed professor who is renown for being the preeminent "Expert of Virtual Economies." This professor, Dr. Edward Castronova, wants a grant to build a Shakespearian Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), in which players could experience a Shakespearian world. Through players immersing themselves in the environment, and with a fairly accurate depiction of the time-period, people could get a much more vivid, clear picture of the world in which Shakespeare wrote.

It's not surprising that MacArthur awarded him $240,000. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Seems like a great idea with project leader with plenty of credentials; at worst it'd be short and cute, at best it might inspire a larger project and lots of attention. That's what I thought when I first heard about the Arden project over a year ago.

For his environment, Castronova initially selected Multiverse, a MMOG-kit designed for small developer studios. Multiverse, for those not familiar with the platform, states its purpose as being "designed to change the economics of virtual world development by providing independent game developers with the resources they need to enter and compete in the $2 billion online game market." Multiverse was - and still is - in a Beta development phase, less than three years out of the box.

However, after months of toiling with Multiverse, the Arden project was scrapped on Multiverse. Arden instead was Beta-released as a patch to Bioware's aging Neverwinter Nights MMOG, after recreating most of the artwork, whose format in Multiverse was incompatible with Neverwinter Nights, according to the Arden development team. Soon after, the project was terminated entirely.

"It's not fun," Castronova explained. "We failed to design a gripping experience."

There's no doubt that the end-result was a failure. What puzzles me, as I learned details about how the game was produced, is why anyone would have expected it to succeed in the first place.

The Larger Picture: Education and Virtual World Development

Allow me to add some perspective. How would this failure look to a potential investor in virtual worlds, or an educator looking to enter the MMO space? How would it look to a development company such as my own, Involve, Inc, regarding the initial platform, Multiverse, or other potential philanthropic organizations like MacArthur?

One might easily infer that the Multiverse platform is not as capable as it was promoted to be, although a developer (like me) looking at the situation would quickly learn that Arden failed because of a mismatch of expectations, not because the Multiverse platform was inherently flawed.

But for a potential investor or educator with little virtual world experience, there might be a whole different implication. If some "genius" professor (Wired Magazine's word), a purported "expert in virtual economies" can't make an educational experience for a quarter of a million dollars, why bother with virtual worlds at all?

Given the high stakes at play here, I will say it: This is not about the failure of one singular project in virtual worlds. Instead, as a well-funded, well-publicized project, Arden's failure can cast doubts over the entire virtual world industry.

There are critically important lessons to be learned by examining what happened with Arden; when we do, we learn that the mistakes made were human, not technological. The nature of the failure revolved around the project management, not the essential viability of virtual spaces, or Multiverse as a platform. Most important, we see that the mistakes made were predictable and avoidable. Any professional development team could have seen this train wreck coming miles down the track.

Let’s explore why.

The Tragedy of Errors

An interview with Arden's lead artist, covered at the MMO blog Channel Massive reveals a glut of odd decisions made about the project. Now, let me be clear - this developer was a full time student and I would not expect him to devote anywhere near the time nor experience that a professional lead project developer for a game development studio could provide. From what I read, he did a good job with the situation he was in, but it is a crying shame that he was put in such an awful position to begin with.

The nature of these odd decisions is further illustrated by an interview with Castronova in the current edition of Wired Magazine. In it, Castronova shares a series of five tips that are absolutely indisputable, but an absolute "DUH!" for anyone who has ever developed a real game.

Since I am a technologist by inclination and profession, let’s get to the gritty stuff.

The Fool's Errors

(All quotes from the aforementioned, wonderfully frank, Massive interview)

1. Their lead artist, who would become their lead developer, was a full-time college student. Gee, perhaps a major project like designing and constructing a MMORPG deserves someone devoting his or her entire attention to it?

2. Not only was the lead a full-time student, but the plan was that the staff would rotate every year. What kind of game development plan includes rotating the staff yearly? How could anyone guarantee even a modicum of continuity?

3. "In our first year of development we had planned to create a working prototype of the game with around 80 hours of content," said the lead developer. Considering that most video games, with multi-million dollar budgets, have something like 10 hours of content, Arden’s base expectation of how much work was needed was off by a factor of at least 100 times.

Let me say it again: The estimate of work that they hoped to do was more than 100 times what the budget would have allowed.

4. "An element that I particularly enjoyed was how we had planned to record every line of NPC dialogue. I'm sure that any experienced MMO designer would laugh at this idea and tell me how unreasonable it is." Yes.

5. "The big turning point ... The whole team was already stressed because we had switched engines and this had a significant impact on the every facet of the project. We pulled an all-nighter, which for some ended up being two all-nighters back to back without any sleep." Most game developer professionals could tell you that, on occasion, these happen. If it couldn’t have been avoided, a professional project manager should have seen to the care and feeding of the staffers working in crisis mode. Without that level of management: "Our nerves were absolutely fried and anytime someone left to take a break, the rest of us would question their devotion to life in general let alone the project. ‘Is so-and-so serious? They must not really care about Arden at all.’ The 40-hour hell march killed our spirits."

6. "Network stability should have been the last thing we had to worry about – we were still trying to complete the game! The server would crash every 80 minutes." Ensuring network stability should have been a top priority. The interview mentions no further detail into why the game was so unstable, so I can only conclude that they did not ever find the root of the problem. Rather than complaining and giving up, a professional team would have been able to trace down the issue and provide a specific explanation.

7. "Departure from Arden was somewhat staggered. Several team members – mainly the volunteers – more than likely left in frustration." ‘Nuff said.

8. "A fundamental approach to the MMO genre would have really helped us. It was obvious that we weren't going to be making the next big thing; however, we were really trying to create an engaging and immersive MMORPG. This was unrealistic and ultimately part of our downfall. If I could go back to that time, I would suggest scaling down the project and really focusing on a few, key gameplay mechanics. For example, a primitive crafting system coupled with a small-scale PvP arena." Yup.

9. "If the technology is not working and the team is inexperienced, better technology is needed. Immediately." To me, this reads as a slight to Multiverse. Whether Multiverse failed was the chief question in my mind since hearing about Arden's failure last year. As a virtual world developer working across multiple platforms, I wanted to know if Multiverse was inherently flawed.

Last week, I had the chance to find out, when Castronova spoke at the Life 2.0 conference.

10. At Life 2.0, I asked Castronova directly why Multiverse didn't work for Arden. Castronova said that he wasn't a game developer, that he spent five months working with Arden in Multiverse before he realized the platform didn't have sufficient built-in content, such as medieval style houses, etc.

He expected content to be there, and it wasn’t. And to add insult to injury, it took five months figuring this out.

Why Didn't Castronova Know?

In all my close research of Multiverse, I have never seen any promises that independent game developers would be able to build a game without having to provide their own content. Did somebody at Multiverse mislead Castronova? Did Castronova consult any professional game developers at all?

Or, what seems more likely to be the case, did the professor just fail to do his own homework?

"I hadn't realized Multiverse was so new", Castronova said at Life 2.0.

Seriously, I'm not kidding. This is a direct quote.

I am not sure how he could have missed this crucial point. How does one choose a platform to create an MMOG and secure a quarter-million-dollar grant to do so without researching the progress of the technology and what it is capabilities it offers? Did Castronova miss the barrage of press releases and buzz that was printed from a variety of sources describing Multiverse's Beta opening at the end of October 2006?

Conclusion: More Harm Than Good

Arden's blunders have tarnished Multiverse's reputation and also raise questions about the viability of education in virtual worlds. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Arden's failure has done more to hurt than help education in virtual worlds. This borders on disaster for the industry, and Castronova's "Mea Culpa"just isn't sufficient.

Of course, Wired Magazine (still stinging from its own poorly designed, executed and reviewed foray into virtual space) dumps its usual pooh-pooh on virtual worlds through the article's headline. The headline on the print article is "Playing the Fool: Trying to Design a Truly Entertaining Game Can Defeat Even a Certified Genius." This read to me as, "Gee, if a genius can't make a good educational MMOG, no one can!" That is the exact mindset plaguing pundits of the virtual world industry that we as developers need to eschew. The errors made in this project would have been obvious and avoidable for any professional game or virtual world designer.

In any event, after the termination of Arden, Castronova is talking about the insight gained from this “research project.” But as research, it failed to meet even basic criteria. The knowledge gained was already commonly available. The MacArthur Foundation, I assume, did not intend to not spend $240,000 to train a professor and a few students on what not to do in interactive game design. I mean seriously, for that price, you could have paid for the entire undergraduate education of several students (and there are any number of schools doing really superior work in game design and technology).

And I wonder: Does Castronova's lack of prior knowledge about these issues indicate a larger issue with educators being out-of-touch with the industry? I’m hoping it’s an exception, as I have seen plenty of educators within virtual worlds doing much better jobs with much less money.

***

Takeaway message: They should have known.

Game designers and software engineers have understood and thoroughly exploited these design and programming technologies for more than a decade. This is why it is important to use professional developers, people who have been doing this sort of thing for awhile. With major demonstration projects like this, there is so much potentially at stake for the industry; it's a shame to see a great idea that had an opportunity to shine instead falter and collapse due to lack of sensible decision-making, and then have the technology blamed for the failure.