Oct 16, 2011

Posted by in Wild Space | 0 Comments

Wild Space: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Release Date

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

I’ll just come out and say it: I’m a huge fan of Austen Courpet’s video blog series Yufmelt Shot First on his website Yufmelt.com. The series has been on hiatus for a while until this week when Austen and co. shot (see what I did there?) episode 9. The episode introduces a new cinematography style that looks less like a webcam and more like a professional interview (but where are the awesome posters?!). Since they haven’t released an episode since the release date was announced they devoted this 5:33 gem to talking about it. In short, having a release date is good, but a release date five days before Christmas is not so good. Lots of people who want to be there for release won’t be able to simply due to the release date being so close to a major holiday.

Yufmelt!

The video is nice and quick, gets to the point, and is done with a terrific sense of humor which keeps it entertaining. Check it out here.

GDC Online is a major industry conference where developers discussing ways and techniques to make the video games better. BioWare had a few speakers at the event and Darth Hater was there to provide us with some live blog goodness. The presentation that I found to be most intriguing was given by Georg Zoeller, resident official forum hero, and Principal Lead Combat Designer on SW:TOR. In a nutshell, his talk, titled “Rapid MMO Content Iteration and Validation with Spatial Analysis in Star Wars: The Old Republic”, was really about how you take all the information and feedback that a development team gets from players, interprets that feedback, and iterates or improves the game as a result.

In the case of SW:TOR, there are several ways that player feedback is generated: testing forums, screenshots, /bugs, context sensitive surveys, chat log, customer service tickets, and in-game feedback. BioWare has also utilizes a tool set that allows the game itself also records almost everything a player does. BioWare saw that players were dying in very specific areas (they can track player death and location) and based on that information and active feedback from players they added the medical probe to the game. Additionally, they can see when and where players were typing the phrase “How does…” or How do I…” in general chat so that they are able to add additional help or tutorials to point the players in the right direction.

Head on over to Darth Hater if you want to read up on the full live blog of this session as well as a few other presentations that BioWare devs were involved in. Thanks to Darth Hater for documenting these sessions for us!

A few weeks back, I put on my tinfoil hat and theorized that one of the reasons that BioWare choose to announce the release date at Eurogamer Expo was because the day before, Blizzard announced that Diablo 3’s release date was being pushed back into 2012. Well, the good folks at TORWars just had to swoop in and prove me wrong! On the release date, they had an interview with Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager, and just revealed why the BioWare doctors announced the release date at Eurogamer Expo and not at New York Comic Con (like BioWare had originally intended). Nothing sinister I assure you, just that some retailers decide to let the release date slip and BioWare felt they had an obligation to make the announcement at that point. Check out TORWars for the full interview.

Leave a Reply