How Bioware Makes A Community Work

Gamasutra has an article discussing the procedures that Bioware uses to maintain and grow their online communities based around their games. From the article: "Fans as content creators are another asset. 'if you build it, they will build it as well...' Some members want to add to the community in very real and meaningful ways, and some of them possess 'mad skillz.' '90% of what sustains a community,' Watamaniuk stated, 'is the community itself. You provide the framework for their work. If fans are there creating content, it means that you don't have to create 100% of the content yourself.'"

Its the games

[Clockwurk]

Bioware for the most part makes RPGs. For the most part, the gamer that is interested in a bioware game is interested in engaging stories and deep characters, and are likely to also enjoy reading and writing (the staples of any online community).

Bioware also has a fair amount of developer interaction, its not uncommon to see Bioware employees answer questions directly.

Forums

[devilsadvoc8]

Bioware's forums are a great example of success. As described in the article, they listen to all of the complaints and stories of exploits, bugs, wishes, etc. As they were developing expansion packs, the developers would frequently drop in the forums to squash rumors that weren't true, help tease the fans about new features and explain what could and could not be done with the engine. It helped to keep the masses from unrealistic expectations and keeps flames to a minimum.

They also support the modding community quite well which is especially important for a D&D based RPG.

Pandemic's next move

[bricklayer]

Interestingly, Pandemic Studios [pandemicstudios.com] has just added a "Communities" link to their homepage. I wonder if we will see a BioWare-type community environment in the months following the developers' merger [pandemicstudios.com].

Apply it to MMORPGs?

[Kent Simon]

I often wonder why this mindset has never carried over to MMO games. Alot of people's frustrations with these games are due to the lack of new content being pushed out the door; And to be honest, its quite a load for a developer to take on.

I know there are some games like Second Life that have taken this approach, but its never been done in a meaningful, storyline driven sort of way.

With the recent post about bioware's contest ( too lazy to dig up a link ), it seems like this company definitely has the rig

Re:Apply it to MMORPGs?

[C0rinthian]

Eve Online has quite a bit of developer interaction with the community, and the most interesting parts of the game is the 'meta-content' from player interaction. The players may not be designing traditional content, but the game natually promotes complex, and entertaining interactions.

Interesting observations

[PIPBoy3000]

I've talked with Jay before and he's a very nice guy. I suspect many of the lessons he's learned here were painful ones.

It's also interesting what wasn't talked about. I think Bioware has had some very painful interactions with some of the license holders of various intellectual properties (e.g. D&D and Star Wars). Often times, they're stuck being intermediaries between those groups and the community. I suspect the place isn't always a happy one.

From a builder's perspective (I make NWN mods), I very much appreciate developer's comments on the forums as well as releasing good information and tools to aid my tasks. We're essentially unpaid volunteers that increase the value of their product. I think it's important that developers treat these small groups of rabid mod makers quite well. Folks like Valve and Epic and Bioware have generally done a pretty good job with this, one of the reasons people still play Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, and Neverwinter Nights.

Re:Interesting observations

[BioGeorg]

I've talked with Jay before and he's a very nice guy. I suspect many of the lessons he's learned here were painful ones.

He has been threatened with excommunication from all existing and non existing religions, had his soul signed up for for eternal damnation and probably read more personal threats and insults than even the most hardcore Usenet junkies :)

"Support content creators [unless they use Linux]"

[Jacius]

Well the article is pretty devoid of useful or interesting information, besides implying that Bioware has the names and addresses of all its customers, so I'll have to create some interest of my own.

*clears throat*

How does Bioware make a community work?

<spiteful>Well, it's certainly not by letting Linux and Mac users create their own content!</spite>

*grumble grumble*

Yeah, I know they did better than most by having even clients/servers for Linux and Mac, but NWN without a content editor is like Q

Re:"Support content creators [unless they use Linu

[BioGeorg]

Last I heard, Bioware wasn't even giving hints about their proprietary package formats, let alone a full specification, so it's all been through reverse engineering.
Excuse me? Sounds you heard a lie last time, you might want to check your sources / and or hearing before you post something like this next time.

http://nwn.bioware.com/developers/ [bioware.com]

For those too lazy to check, the link contains the official documentation on the games "proprietary" data file formats (and tons of it), sourcecode examples, exp