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The Brave New World of Open-source Game Design - NYTimes.com



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Acclaim Games' Rockfree project, which is a free-to play, web-based riff on the rhythm genre, was unveiled last November. It did something unique. It offered players the chance to play an early version of the game so they could have a say on the project as it was being developed.



That may not seem like an ominous move in the beta-shrouded web world however for game developers this is yet another sign that the long-standing barrier between the game maker and player, which was put in place to ensure the success of projects is crumbling. One unintentional slip or a public demo that was not perfect - has always been enough to ruin the chances of a game. As the market for video games is becoming more and more crowded however, community engagement is becoming an important tool. The big players in the industry waited around for virtual goods startups to make it before they embraced this business model. In the present, the old guard is starting to connect directly with their communities.



Acclaim's games are vetted by the community during development because, as a publisher of free titles Acclaim is aware that it will not earn a cent unless its players love the games. David Perry, Chief Creative Officer, says that players let us know what they want, and we listen. Wow private server club Through announcing its services to the public, Acclaim has accumulated a legion of 7 million registered users. While Howard Marks, Chief Executive has refused to reveal the 2008 earnings, Parks Associates gaming analyst Michael Cai estimates that they were between $10 million and $30 million.



It is crucial to encourage community input. Greg Chudecke is building an online community around his business Caffienated Games to so he can gauge community reaction to his ideas and make sure that he's creating a game that people will be eager to play. Gaia Online, a virtual world and social networking platform, created its own MMO "zOMG!" because the community wanted it. Electronic Arts relied on a community to populate the Spore world of creatures to great success. The Sony-published LittleBigPlanet hopes that players will be able to create an endless quantity of content for the game using its tools for generating levels.



Acclaim has gone beyond beta-testing and user-generated content to engage the community in every aspect of game development, from localization to concept creation. Not only does Acclaim gain the knowledge of the masses but it's also establishing connections with its fans.



When it translated the fantasy role-playing game 2Moons from Korean to English in late 2007 Acclaim opened the voice casting to its users. The company provided character sketches and gamers contributed voice files. The project generated such excitement in the community that Acclaim is constructing a formal peer review system that will be used in future projects.



In the year 2000, Acclaim launched a game experiment that was dubbed Project Top Secret. The goal: Crowd-source the idea of a massively multiplayer game. The idea the 60,000 players in the community created as an amalgamation of World of Warcraft and Ben Hur where players race and ride back, breed, and fight with mounts "was so radical it wasn't something that the Chinese team [who were contracted to create the game] could have thought of making," says Perry, who also directed Top Secret. "The thing that's fascinating when you design for crowds is that you end up with ideas that no one else has ever thought of in the past."



Acclaim has decided to open development of the multi-million-dollar publishing deal to the community. The company initially invited 20 teams to participate in the contest, but has now reduced that number to two. Perry states that Acclaim is able to hire an outside developer to run the competition if neither team is able to meet the requirements.



The publisher also has players who translate the martial arts-themed MMO 9Dragons for other regions. The benefit is that they know the game's terms and concepts better than almost everyone else, which helps avoid the mistakes translation companies make as a a result of never having played it.



The gaming industry started out as a retailer of products. However, it is now a provider of services. And , as Acclaim's Perry states when you're in the service industry, you have to care about the things that your community cares about; involving Acclaim's members in the process of producing games can help keep them from migrating elsewhere. As more game developers embrace the free-to play model and web-based games theywill also begin to see their communities as an integral component of the process of designing.



"It's called embracing the future," says Perry. "You must accept it and deal with it."



Image of Rockfree by courtesy of Acclaim CEO David Perry image courtesy dPerry.com



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