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Games Entertainment

Customer Service Jeopardizes Online Gaming? 53

Posted by simoniker from the what-do-you-want-n00b? dept.
Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their new opinion piece suggesting poor customer service infrastructure is the biggest obstacle to to the growth of online gaming. According to the piece: "The biggest threat to online games today is the industry's neglect of the customer - usually a subscriber. How can a group so focused on giving the customer what they want, fulfilling their inner desires and fantasies in an online game be accused of neglecting this customer?" The writer also advocates partnering with an external subscription management solution if it makes sense, saying: "..overlooking those operational details that support the subscriber (billing, authentication, marketing, etc.) can mean the difference between disaster and success - even for a very good game."
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Customer Service Jeopardizes Online Gaming? More

Customer Service Jeopardizes Online Gaming?

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  • Do not play well with others...ever. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by silentbobdp ( 157345 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:33PM (#6435339) Homepage
    I always thought other annoying players would be the biggest obstacle to MMORPG success.
    • One of the best games I've ever played has dealt with and eliminated these problems. I'm talking about A Tale in the Desert by eGenesis. The players are helpful, the project manager gave out his cell phone number to call if there's ever a problem with the game (like a server crash) If you ever get stuck and need a GM, they'll be there in a matter of a few seconds to help you out. The people are friendly and always willing to help out a new player (one of the 'tests' in the games is to mentor 7 new play
      • I played this game, and though I found it interesting, my mentor didn't help much after the first day and I lost interest when no one wanted to talk. Part of the MMORPG is supposed to be the interaction with other people, it's almost like playing the game alone... with AI generated in the background talking about supplies and updating locations of various people.

  • Ultima Online (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RealityMogul ( 663835 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:41PM (#6435381)
    One of my biggest complaints about Ultima Online was that they never sent out any notifications that your subscription was about to expire. They just left it to you to remember to pay them more money as needed.

    I wasn't a hardcore gamer so I would easily forget about such things as I did have many other aspects of my life that didn't revolve around the game.

    It always bugged me that they couldn't bother to setup a small machine with a 20 line perl script to churn out e-mails.

    A year ago I forgot to pay and when I went to logon my account was dead, so I just said screw it and uninstalled it. The in-game problems were enough to make me want to quit, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

  • The real culprits (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:43PM (#6435399) Homepage
    • Buggy, exploitable software
    • Developers unable or unwilling to fix bugs
    • Servers shut down either periodically or permanently (hi SEGA)
    • Boring, repetitive gameplay
    • This is all true, but what I think the author is talking about is that this is something that should be easy to fix/solve. Get money from people should always be a businesses first priority. Screwing that up put's stress on the rest of the system.

    • Re:The real culprits (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ty ( 15982 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:34PM (#6435825)
      Developers unable or unwilling to fix bugs

      While many online games are very slow to fix bugs, you should not directly blame it on the developers. SQA's are usually in control of what (if any) bugs are fixed. At times, in large companies, the development team may not even know a bug exists.

      For example, we had a major exploit in PvP in Everquest on one of the servers with special rules for combat. Two years went by without it being fixed. The actual dev team didn't learn of the exploit until they doing Q&A with a public audience, and were confronted with it. The devs claimed the SQA team had never notified them. However, the exploit was patched shortly after.

      • While many online games are very slow to fix bugs, you should not directly blame it on the developers. SQA's are usually in control of what (if any) bugs are fixed. At times, in large companies, the development team may not even know a bug exists.

        I'm sorry, but I'm still bitter about the loss of my Phantasy Star Online character. SEGA knew there was a way for players to completely delete (well, modify beyond recognition) other players' games, but they did not fix the bug and did not disclose it (which wo

  • Quite true (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @01:49PM (#6435450) Homepage Journal
    This article is quite true and I can support it with experience. I used to play Ultima Online and had been a long time player. I was part of the PVP (player vs player) niche of the game. While it is true that we were the minority, we still payed our monthly fee and deserved to have fun. Gradually over the years, the developers continued to make changes forcing PVPers to quit. Instead of listening to the overwhelming cries to make a server just for us, they continued to make the game cater to people who enjoyed farming gold and items. The casual PVPer was left in the dust

    To make a long story short, they did try to make a server just for us, but they failed to listen to what the PVP customers were trying to tell them. We wanted casual PVP; we didn't want to spend 10 hours a day trying to farm gold and items in order to compete! So because of developer ignorance and failure to listen to customers, they've all but lost their PVP minority. Now the difference between UO and Everquest is minimal and UO's days are quite numbered now that SWG and FFXI are rolling in.

    If they wanted to save their game and make it unique they should have offered what no other game had: casual PVP. But it seemed they were more concerned with the short term business model than the long term business model. Drop an insignificant minority here, gain some newbies there, raise subscription rates for 3 months. Seems okay on the surface, but by shunning long time players and relying on a constant flow of newbies, your game is destined to fail.

    • Re:Quite true (Score:4, Insightful)

      by achacha ( 139424 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:35PM (#6435837) Homepage
      Casual PVPer is like saying a casual serial killer. The only benefit to the MMORPG is that they can be used as a self policing aspect when reputation system is inadequate.

      PvP is the scourge that prevented UO from growing and why EQ has over 300,000 subscribers. PvP is a small subset of players that somehow feel that they need to be supported while they drive away many of casual gamers. And there are 50x more casual gamers than hardcore gamers, from the financial point of view, the companies would rather cater to the casual gamers rather than the hardcore ones. Casual gamers still pay the same amount per account and play far less reducing the load on the servers and in the long run reducing bandwidth costs of a hardcore player. Hardcore players are actually financially the worst type of a customer they use up way more resources than their monthly payment "allows".

      Most PvPer tend to be griefers, PKers and generally annoying people. Having played UO, I was unable to do anything in the game without someone attempting to kill me, the game became 1 domensional, leave town and run hoping you don't get killed. The only option was to become a PKer and prey on the clueless newbies and ruin their experience, and I chose not to do that.

      If people want to PK then they should be playing Quake/Halflife/etc. where the environment is set up for them to kill each other and leave the rest of us MMORPG players to explore the world, group up, research, tradeskill and try to have a good time.

      • If people want to PK then they should be playing Quake/Halflife/etc. where the environment is set up for them to kill each other and leave the rest of us MMORPG players to explore the world, group up, research, tradeskill and try to have a good time.

        PvPers ARENT the minority, PvE'ers are and that is a big reason why MMORPGs haven't caught on big with the mass market. Most video games that are played online are about playing AGAINST someone else rather than the computer. That is the joy of online gam

        • If you take a look at the book "Developing Online Games", they've published the results of some surveys taking by online players about how they play.

          According to those results, 30% of players are "explorers", 25% are "socializers", 23% are "achievers", and 22% are "killers".

          So, assuming PvP means "killers", this *does* put PvP players squarely in the minority.

          The book goes on to explain why "killers" are the biggest cause of other people leaving MMO games, and things you can do to remedy that situation

          • Sorry I missed this follow up until now, but you wrote..

            If you take a look at the book "Developing Online Games", they've published the results of some surveys taking by online players about how they play. According to those results, 30% of players are "explorers", 25% are "socializers", 23% are "achievers", and 22% are "killers". So, assuming PvP means "killers", this *does* put PvP players squarely in the minority.

            First off, lets look at who the book was written by. Two women. You can take thi

      • Casual PVPer is like saying a casual serial killer.

        You know, this statement just proves to me how bias you are. Coupled with "If people want to PK then they should be playing Quake/Halflife/etc" you couldn't be more wrong. If quake was doing it for me why would I be paying a monthly fee for UO at all?

        PvP is the scourge that prevented UO from growing and why EQ has over 300,000 subscribers

        UO should have focused on PVP and not PVM or PVE. Everquest clearly kicks UO's ass in that department. Now because

        • The problem, really, is that most MMORPG-ers don't like PVPers. Bitch all you want about "bias", but
          bias against people who are runing a game for you is reasonable. If a company has people who are dropping accounts because those people are sick of the PVPers, then the company has to decide who's more important.

          EQ had a really elegant solution: on most of the servers, anyone who wanted to could become PVP at any time. The trick: if you were PVP, you could only kill other PVPers. You had to leave everyon

    • Re:Quite true (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Micro$will ( 592938 )
      But it seemed they were more concerned with the short term business model than the long term business model. Drop an insignificant minority here, gain some newbies there, raise subscription rates for 3 months. Seems okay on the surface, but by shunning long time players and relying on a constant flow of newbies, your game is destined to fail.

      This is true for any service. It could explain why AOL lost over a quarter million subscribers this year. [internetnews.com]
    • Except design decisions aren't about customer service. Sure, perhaps UO completely failed in the arena of "casual PVP"*, but how was their CS?

      ( * Though in a game such as UO where advancement is such a huge focus of gameplay, I'm not sure how you can do casual PVP without a complete redesign of the entire game.)

    • Re:Quite true (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Shrubber ( 552857 )
      The article is completely right, except for the conclusion. All of the outlined problems do exist. They don't stop people from playing, however. To say the future of online gaming is dim goes against all of the evidence we already have. People will play bad games, get treated like crap, AND pay for it in droves. Sure, there's plenty of people who say they quit such and such a game because of the poor service. Then there's the hundreds of thousands of other people who are still shelling out their money

  • PHBs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pmz ( 462998 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:10PM (#6435632) Homepage
    Until corporate accounting evolves to properly label customer service as a means for profit rather than expense, this will always be a problem.

    On rare occasion, I've had a company blow me away with tremendous customer service, and that almost guarantees I'll be a repeat customer. At least, I'll think of that company, again. Customer service really should be viewed as advertising, where it is the company's chance to define their image to customers. Even though the total number of people exposed are few, the power of word-of-mouth should not be underestimated.

    The last couple of times I've bought from lesser-known retailers listed at Pricewatch, I'll do a google search for "company-xyz sucks OR 'poor service'", for example. The results can be suprising and help me determine whether a vendor is an acceptable risk.
  • Bravo! That was some great detective work there.

    In other news, the Earth is a sphere, light is really fast and snails have shells.

    Among the other leading causes of of customer dissatisfaction are:
    1) Lack of Content
    2) 4 bazillion patches a day
    3) Easily hacked game servers
    4) Exorbitant monthly rates while providing very little actual "service"
    5) Server instability
    6) the color yellow
  • Why should gaming customer service be any different than regular software customer service? We all know regular software customer service is frustrating with the wait times, automated email responders and general lack of any real help unless you pay for it. I'm sure a lot of it is outsourced anyway since the entire point is pinching every single cent out of the end user and offering nothing back unless you squeeze it out of them.

    My local isp's customer service is in a different state and they never know sh
    • Well.. you'd *think* that an online game would have better customer service because they're depending on monthly subscription fees. Regular software is usually a one-time cost. The company already has your money, so they can afford to be a little cavalier in the customer service department.

      Not so with an online game. They want you to pay up every month to keep playing. You'd think they'd realize that it's a lot easier and cheaper to keep existing customers happy then it is to go out recruiting new on
  • to feel screwed from the Management.

    I remember when I used to play on an unofficial Ultima Online shard

    Origin: before continuing please note

    • I aknowledge that it breaches your TOS contract
    • That shard anyway closed and disbanded and I am not informed what their admins are doing now
    • I am not advocating with this article to play on unofficial servers (rather: che contrary, play on official ones dudes, or play free games like muds or free mmorpgs [planeshift.it])

    Back to us...
    I can remember playing on this unofficial UO s

  • Similarities to... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ae0nflx ( 679000 )
    Whenever I think about MMORPGs, I think about the music industry. There are so many similarities, buggy software, restrictive service for exorbantant monthly fees...

    The only company, in my opinion that has gotten online gaming right is Blizzard, you buy the game (right...buy...) they provide Battle.net for FREE. hmm. what a novel concept. I would think that most gamers switch from game to game every few months, yes some games last more than others but it is often too much effort to switch gaming services.

  • What a surprise! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PapaZit ( 33585 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @04:11PM (#6436688)
    Check out the "So what can I do?" section. The answer: "an out-of-the-box subscription management solution". Other tips: don't do it yourself, expect it to take time and cost a lot of money.

    Now, skip down to the bottom of the article:

    Dale Munk is CEO of subscription management software provider Sandlot - www.sandlot.com
    A subscription management software provider recommending that people spend a lot of money on subscription management software. Who'd have thought?

  • I mean, honestly, how many times does news of a game coming out happen and people start asking when the Linux or Mac version is going to come out and gets met with silence? Gives you a real warm feeling about wanting to do business with that publisher in the future.

  • Surprised this isn't a repost (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @04:55PM (#6437137)
    Problems with Customer Service in online games are nothing new. The several people above complaining about CS in UO, of all games, should indicate that.

    But the real problem is that CS in an online game is, believe it or not, hard. Reasons for this:
    • Customers asking for things they cannot have due to regulations governing CS. These are games, they have rules, and they have to be fair for everyone. If CS grants certain favors to some players and not others, those other people complain. Ironically enough, if CS doesn't grant those favors to some players and not others, the some players are the ones complaining.
    • Customers asking for immediate gratification through immediate information, even when the knowledge will not gratify them. So the servers are down. "Why why why?" "OMG wehn will tehy b bakc up!!!!1" If you've ever been in an online game's out-of-game chat when the servers were down, you've probably seen your fair share of this. The problem is, there are tons of people asking why, there are tons of people complaining, and many of them will not be sated by the truth anyway. Yes, the servers are down, and the players have reason to be distraught, but unless the company is completely slacking off, someone is working on the problem.
    • There are usually not enough CS staff for the number of players. This is exacerbated by two factors: one, a small portion of the player base makes an inordinately large portion of the requests received by the CS staff; and two, CS is notoriously underpaid in the MMOG industry. (For reference, EverQuest GMs used to be hired initially as temps, and after the temp agency took its cut, they were making about $8 per thankless hour, while living mostly just north of San Diego.)
    • Customers suck. Yeah, that's not a very polite way to say it, but drawing from some of the earlier points I made, this summary can be obtained: an inordinately small portion of the customer base complains both constantly and quite rudely to an overworked, underpaid CS team about issues beyond CS's control. Players blame CS for everything, because CS is the front line for a lot of their problems, regardless of where the request should go. CS generally doesn't handle tech support (though this depends to some extent on the company). CS certainly is not in charge of making design decisions. CS has a very limited scope of action, yet customers who do not (or refuse to) understand this continue to levy their complaints against the first people they see - customer service.
    • Lawyers suck even worse. Ever since the AOL lawsuit regarding volunteer workers, MMOG maintainers have been scared shitless of the implications of being sued. EverQuest was and is, to my knowledge, the only professionally-published online game still to make use of volunteer customer service personnel. While the Guide Program was not the perfect solution to the customer service problem, it provided advantages in terms of cost to the end-user which are unavailable when all of a company's CS staff must be hired. Yes, a company should absorb the costs of customer service when they are making money hand-over-fist, but realistically, no company is going to cut the bottom line to make the customers happy when they have a parent company (with shareholders) breathing down their neck. (Alternatively, shareholders and parent companies suck and will be a thorn in the side of customers until their expectations on return can be brought to a more reasonable level.)

    So, yes, CS is hard. Everyone hates you - the customers, the pencil-pushing-penny-pinchers, everyone. Do companies owe us good CS for our money? Yes, of course. For our $14.95 a month, we should be getting the same sort of CS we get from the phone company, the cable company, plumbers, banks, mechanics.......

    ...and hopefully the irony there was lost on no one.

    • Anarchy Online actively recruits ARKs for in-game help. I believe the only requirement is to have at least one level 50 character, though I imagine they can be as selective as necessary.

      However, having sat in a petition queue for over two hours without advancing in priority, I'd like to mention that they should be less selective in their help and look for more quantity. I mean... I was only stuck inside a mission. Beam me up, Scotty!

  • must be the great customer service.

    I knew there was an explanation somewhere.
  • Why don't games have moderated server? Or a better way to find people you've played with before.
  • I think this point is well made and needs to be taken seriously by the game companies. I've played a lot of MMOs, and even the new SWG title doesn't seem to have improved upon it.

    As if they didn't know they'd have 130k subscribers in the first week, the response time for an in-game ticket filed currently runs between 1 & 2 days. Generally the response is "It's a known bug, sorry, can't help you".

    Even when you lose items to a known bug, they won't always make it right, opting instead to say "You'll be
    • "At least in EQ the "Game Masters" could materialize in front of you and looked sufficiently godlike. In SWG they are just a voice on the chat-channel (when you finally get them)."

      I think they took a cue from DAoC on that one. A considerable amount of time was wasted in EQ CS by having to wait for your machine to zone, wait to do this and that, and generally figure out what was going on by going there. Yeah, you lose that personal touch sometimes, but the intent is to make the process more efficient (esp

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