Interview with Martin Bruusgaard, the former Lead Designer of TSW.
I asked Bruusgaard where things got off-track. What was the cause of The Secret World‘s troubles? “I think we probably should’ve gone for something that was maybe a bit more familiar,” Bruusgaard admitted. “No classes, no levels, different weapons, and you have the skills. Yes we have quests, but some of the quests are weird, where you look up on the browser to get the solution… it’s all familiar, but with a twist, and I don’t think we should’ve twisted that many things.”
“I have to stress I really like the game the way it is now, but if I’m thinking about making the game a more commercial success, I think we should’ve gone more commercial,” Bruusgaard said. “That’s what I mean about not putting our twist to the degree that we did.” Bruusgaard pointed to the level-less progression system as a problem for the game.
“This may be a radical thing to say, but I think it would have helped if we actually had levels in the game. I’m sort of ashamed to say it, but I think that might’ve made things feel more familiar when it comes to players tracking their own progression and telling how strong they are, and knowing where to go. I think people got lost because they don’t have this number telling them how strong they are,” Bruusgaard said.
“I could sort of tell something was wrong. There was a lot of rumors saying it was going really badly, but nobody really knew, because they wouldn’t tell us any numbers. Player numbers and all that is very confidential, so we actually didn’t know because we’re a listed company,” Bruusgaard said. “But I could tell by the sort of frequency of certain meetings and certain people talking. You sort of get this vibe that something is wrong.”
Bruusgaard had seen enough layoffs to know what was going on. After the fact, Funcom would announce that half of its staff had been laid off. But what was actually happening was much worse for The Secret World. According to Bruusgard, almost 100% of the people at the Funcom office in Oslo who worked on game were placed on forced leave, otherwise known as furlough. “I think it was five people who weren’t put on forced leave,” Bruusgaard told the Penny Arcade Report.
Miramon
1582
They didn’t tell the lead about subscriptions? I mean, was he the lead, ie like a CD, or a lead among many?
I can almost understand not telling the general run of the staff about the numbers because there was some fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, weak as an excuse as that may be, but you’d think the guy in charge of designing the game might conceivably enter into your confidences in that regard.
Of course this kind of information is not only going to leak quickly because it is such a large and loosely kept secret, but it can be estimated externally anyway in various ways. So what, do you get 3 more days of not quite abysmal morale out of the live team before firing half of them if you keep it a secret? Maybe some privileged shareholders get to dump early or something and then get pursued by the EU version of the SEC? How nice.
It is confidential information which impacts the share price. Its distribution would definitely be limited to the highest management levels who require it for their decision making. You could argue the team lead should be in there. But morale matters aside, there is no question of casually giving that number to employees. And yes, that kind of thing is regulated.
I work in a different industry (oil) and am involved in the design, development and production of the quaterly reports. But it doesn’t give me access to the live reports sent to higher management.
Wendelius
I can’t agree with the reasons given for its relative failure. Honestly, I think the biggest mistake was thinking that a solid niche product was somehow going to pull huge subscription numbers. Their expectations regarding numbers were completely divorced from any reality. The poor marketing and relatively buggy launch did not help either.
They also launched at a rough time for subscription retention, with GW2 and MoP just around the corner.
Vomiting up another WoW clone is not some magic formula to success, as most of those are screwed as well.
I agree. The things he lists are the some of the exact things that made it enjoyable for me. If subscription-free GW2 hadn’t come along, I may very well still be playing TSW.
Nesrie
1586
I can’t believe they are focusing on it being too different instead of you, you know, broken, buggy, not that great to look at, incomplete.
I’ll join the chorus: what hurt the game at launch wasn’t how “different” it was. What hurt it were quest and chat bugs that crippled it.
I’ll actually probably play some during October for Halloween and all, even so.
blah
1588
If broken and buggy is what killed MMO’s at release GW2 would be dead as well. It’s had just as many issues, far more broken quests, and the worse CS in the industry, but no one is talking about it like that’s a problem.
He’s probably right, TSW is too different for mainstream MMO players to get into, and things that most of us love, like no levels, etc. are more influential to it’s issues than broken chat or quests. It’s always, in my mind, been a niche product based on the choices they made when designing it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, I just think those choices are responsible for the low subscriber numbers, not bugs.
Because it’s not a problem? I’ve been playing since day one, have a level 80, 4 level 30s and have only encountered one bugged skill point and a handful of bugged dynamic events. None of which have hindered my play, unlike the mess TSW was in at launch.
I think it’s a bit of both. It was never going to be a wildly successful mainstream-viable title along the lines of WoW (or, evidently, GW2), but I think it almost certainly lost steam with the niche that would have appreciated it when it turned out to have quest-breaking bugs all over the place and struggled with chat issues for weeks on end. It also sounds like Funcom may not have accurately estimated the size of that niche in their planning, but it’s hard to say.
blah
1591
A handful of bugged quests were all that was wrong in TSW as well. The chat bug was another issue, but ask anyone in the QT3 guild about issues with their guild over the first week or two of GW2. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t join the guild, etc.
If a bugged quest or skill point didn’t hinder your play in GW2 it didn’t hinder your play in TSW either, you could just as easily move on to the next quest in TSW as you could in any other game.
It’s not a problem for you because you are willing to overlook it in GW2 where you weren’t in TSW, not because the problems aren’t there.
That’s probably right, but for whatever reason it didn’t sell that many boxes out of the gate. I don’t think bugs kept people from buying it day one. There were a lot of people taking a wait and see approach, either because it was Funcom or because the game was different enough that they didn’t know what to think.
I finally jumped in and got a copy and have been playing it when I have time. I think it’s great for the most part, but a lot of that is the freshness of the setting and the writing and voice acting. A lot of the quests are standard MMO stuff and don’t do a lot for me. The investigation quests, however, are really interesting. We need more stuff like those in MMOs.
It’s sad to see the lead designer getting cold feet about the vision.
Speaking for myself, I thought there was nothing wrong with TSW at all much, apart from there not being enough of it. (Bugs, sure, but my personal experience wasn’t all that bad, and you could always do something else if one mission bugged.)
While there was story there, I had what was probably one of the best, most immersive gaming experiences I’ve ever had, ranking right up there with SS1/2, etc.
But as soon as the story ran out (which for me was after about a month and a half) - boom, it was like falling over a cliff. The game was suddenly dead to me. (I’d done the Elite dungeons, and had little interest in doing the NM content - maybe if I revisit it soon I will, but at the time, no.)
But it’s sad, because I don’t see how they could have sustained that density of content for a longer game, without having tons more money.
But in a way TSW is its own worst enemy because the bulk of the content that’s there is so good that when it runs out you really feel like there’s nothing there to play any more.
KevinC
1594
The items that Bruusgaard lists about the mistakes are the things I liked most about the game and were the only reason I even tried it, albeit briefly.
Want to know what completely turned me off? Asking for $15/mo on top of the cash shop. One or the other, please, but having both just felt very money-grubbing to me. I also had GW2 coming out the next month or so without any sort of subscription fee at all, so it was a pretty easy decision for me to make.
Different setting, no levels, etc? Best parts of the game.
Razgon
1595
huh? There wasnt a single thing worth buying in the cash shop - Why should that be a turnoff for you? Hell, you could get pretty much every single thing by just questing or purchasing it ingame for ingame money.
It was clothes and titles and vanity pets.
All MMO’s have bugs. We expect them. What killed TSW were bugs that were above and beyond anything you’ll see in GW2 or any other recently-launched MMO.
For starters–a bug in an MMO that does not allow you to talk or communicate to other players in the MMO is a pretty big one. They had that bug, knew about it, and let it go for ten full days because they never realized how important it was until it was too late. (“Oh, it’s just custom-made chat channels. Who uses those?” In a server-less MMO where guilds weren’t given much to do, it turns out EVERYONE uses those.) That was for starters.
More insidious, though, were the quest bugs. Hey, we all expect bugged quests in MMOs. It happens. What killed TSW were that the quest bugs were frequently related to quests that had to be solved through thinking and logic like adventure game puzzles, so the player never knew whether their struggles with a quest were because they weren’t solving the puzzle…or if they were bugs. That’s a huge problem.
Oghier
1597
GW2 has its share of bugs and broken content, but nothing as spectacular as the TSW’s non-functioning chat. I think people also set the expectations bar far lower (too low) for ‘F2P’ games.
It’s a shame. GW2’s content is nowhere close to the quality that TSW offers. But everyone I game with has moved to GW2, and I’ve more or less followed.
Vesper
1598
Wait… did TSW actually get killed? Or are we just talking about how no one’s playing?
Oghier
1599
It’s not dead, though everyone expects the pace of development to slow quite a bit. The new Lead posted his plans for the game here:
http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/game_director_joel_bylos_reveals_his_plans_for_the_secret_world
TSW made other mistakes at launch. Hyped games like TOR can hold off on things like free trials and demos–TSW not so much. The first “free trial” thing they offered in the first month was a buddy code that gave folks without the game a whole DAY of free play. That’s just a whole lot of “not enough” right there.
Back to launch bugs. On the surface they really weren’t all that egregious, and if listed you’d be thinking “Well gosh, those don’t sound too bad; I’ve seen worse from MMO launches of great games.” The problem with the bugs goes back to a lot of the unique things–the nature of the quests, the nature of the server-less system, the nature of no classes or levels–that TSW does. Some of the bugs that popped up that drove people nuts sound piddly, but due to the uniqueness of the game those bugs made “ripples”. In other words, the unique game systems made what would otherwise be small annoying bugs into bugs that severely hindered the enjoyment and enthusiasm of players.
And all that said, I’m going to be playing a lot of the game in October, I think…
