DCUO Source.com = March 5th
Massively.com = February 26th
PC IGN.com = February 19th
MMORPG.com = February 11th
Gamespy.com = February 25th
Zam.com = March 3rd

Welcome to this week's Deathstryker's Dungeon. For those of you that have a little super sleuth in you, your challenge, before reading the rest of this blog, is to figure out the significance of each of those dates. For the rest of you, the answer is below...

Those dates are the subject of this week's blog. Give up? It's the last time each of the aforementioned websites updated their site with news about DCUO. Why have I chosen this collection of sites? One is a site dedicated solely to DCUO, 3 are sites which cover only MMOs, and the other 2 cover every game currently in development for the PC. Essentially, these sites are representative of nearly each and every website which caters to visitors who would be interested in DCUO. Still, the question likely looms in your mind, "where the hell is DS going with this?"

The answer is simple. After the flurry of activity that we've seen over the last 6 weeks (starting with CES and ending with the latest Ask SOE), DCUO is about to enter "the dead zone." I took that term from an extremely well respected football columnist (Vic Ketchman) who used the term to describe the period between your favorite NFL team being ending the regular season (or being knocked out of the playoffs) and the start of the new league calendar year (which is when free agency begins, and the scouting combine is held). Essentially, it's the period between January and March when you have absolutely no idea what is happening with your football team, and for many fans, it's a time of great angst. When I was in the Air Force as a member of Space Command, we had a term to describe periods of non-communication, that term being "radio silent." Still another term that is often used to describe a period of no communication (or greatly lessened communication) is "blackout" which I've always found to be a bit dramatic.

So why do we care? What does it matter if DCUO enters into this "dead zone," goes "radio silent," or commits a media "blackout?" Let me posit this response to you. Think back to the last time you were watching television, and right in the middle of a show that you were watching, the screen suddenly creates "snow" with that awful sound made famous by the film "White Noise." Now remember the last time you expected a program to start, yet for some reason, your television is displaying the text "technical difficulties." Finally, think upon a time when you were watching a news program or a show that runs live, when suddenly, the picture on the screen goes completely out, and the screen displays complete nothingness, almost as if the television isn't actually on.

If you're anything like most people, each of those situations elicits a feeling. The white noise usually creates a feeling of confusion (for those of you that are old enough to intentionally watch the snow on "certain channels" to catch a glimpse of "certain things," we aren't talking about that...sheesh). Technical difficulties usually creates anger, especially if the problem persists for a lengthy period of time. But it's the third one, the "complete nothingness" example that actually bothers us. Our emotions run the range of surprise, to anger, and even to worry. These emotions exist because humans are the great communicators. From speech to symbols, from the written word to the telegrams, from cell phones to the internet, communicating is a basic human behavior. So, when that communication begins to lessen, so does human interest.

That's the catch-22 of MMO development. How does a developer communicate to the level required of an ever growing and ever more enlightened consumer, a consumer that has grown up on CNN and the 24 hours news cycle, while also trying to manage the expectations of the consumer and actually produce the product that the consumer is clamoring for? To answer that, let's first look at "how" various gaming companies have chosen to communicate with their consumers, potential consumers, and detractors.

Different gaming companies have taken varying strategies over the years in regards to the important issue of how to communicate, and SOE specifically has actually re-tooled their approach with each new MMO. Shortly after the news that Cryptic was to develop Marvel Online (a game that has since morphed into Champions Online), official forums sprang up quickly, and the vast majority of the news that comes out of Cryptic is created by Cryptic staffers and disseminated to the public through their official website and forums. EA Mythic used IGN and other fansites to interact with the communities for Dark Age of Camelot, and until recently, also for Warhammer Online (Warhammer now has official forums). Turbine announced the MMOs that they were developing a few years ago (Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online) and used major gaming network sites for news for quite some time, before finally opening official sites and forums prior to beta for each title.

This brings us to SOE. In SOE's youth, Brad McQuaid (a producer and lead designer for EverQuest) used IGN's Vault Network message boards as his conduit to the gaming community. Most don't remember EQ's beta period or early release, but most of the best information that came from the development team actually came from the SOE's use of the Vault Network boards. The game did eventually receive official forums, but they weren't operated, managed, or moderated in the same manner that they are today. Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) was the next big SOE release, and that game featured an official website and official forums well in advance of beta. SWG ushered in a ton of changes to the way that SOE communicated with consumers. First, they introduced a brand new message board system to coincide with the launch of SWG. This board system was the beginning of a process to link the various consumers from all of SOE's titles into one system. For SWG, a community manager was put in place a substantial period of time before beta began, and he used the official site and forums much like Blizzard does now for World of Warcraft.

SOE again signaled a shift in how they would communicate with their player base prior to the company's next huge release, Everquest 2. For Everquest 2, a community manager was again selected very early on, and while an official site was launched very quickly after the game was announced to be in development, official forums weren't opened to consumers until the day the game actually launched. SOE primarily used major fan sites and network media sites to provide information, and even created an advertisement which aired in certain movie theaters. This approach seemed to work extremely well as fan sites thrived because official forums didn't receive all the attention, and many different potential consumers saw personalized attention as the EQ2 community manager reached out to a vast number of different gaming communities to discuss EQ2's development. This of course brings us to DCUO. In many ways, the approach SOE has taken with DCUO mirrors that of EQ2, with a few distinct differences. First, SOE has yet to provide DCUO with a community manager. Second, and perhaps of much greater interest, SOE is using Myspace to reach out to fans, as opposed to using their official site. This is a novel approach to communication, and it will be interesting to see how a site like Myspace, which is a social networking site if there ever was one, creates demand for DCUO, while simultaneously providing the information that many MMO consumers crave. It should also be noted that even in the absence of a dedicated DCUO community manager, SOE employees have interacted very strongly with the community, both in person at the various conferences and conventions, and online, such as posting to this very site (and the community here eats up each and every post).

So now that we know how MMO companies in general, and SOE in particular, communicate with potential consumers, we turn to why gaming companies choose to communicate about certain subjects and at certain times, and why these companies seemingly stand mute in response to many important questions, and go into "the dead zone" for certain periods of time. To answer the former, the response that is most infuriating to potential consumers, but is also the most honest many times, is that the developers honestly don't yet have an answer to a certain question. Questions such as "when will the game come out" and "when will beta start" are often met with a standard response of "no date as of yet, but we're working diligently to bring you the best gaming experience possible when that day comes, and we're excited to show you our game when it's ready." The truth of the matter is that this isn't slick PR-speak to avoid or deflect hard questions, the simple reality is that an MMO takes years to develop, and asking a developer for an exact date on an issue of major importance is frankly much like asking him to be a fortune teller. Yet other questions are deflected routinely simply because developers have learned from past experience that if you promise a gamer something and fail to deliver on it, that promise is going to hound you until that game shuts down its servers. For that reason, developers often times simply deflect the question, or choose not to answer it. The theory there is that if they say nothing, gamers can't slam them for failing to deliver on a promise later. In an earlier blog, I detail SOE's latest attempt to give gamers the information they crave, while holding certain information back. It's called "prove it through play" and essentially is premised on the notion that potential consumers react better to information discerned through playing the game, as opposed to being told what to expect from the game. Overall, the idea seems to be a solid on that is working rather smoothly.

Except for one small problem. Someone forgot to tell SOE that unless they attend a convention or conference that the average consumer will be at, the average consumer can't play the game, and thus, SOE can't prove it through play. The first few months of 2009 have shows this theory to be brilliant, heck, the booming success of this site due to coverage of CES and the NY Comic-Con is evidence enough that potential consumers are extremely excited about DCUO. However, the next big event isn't until June, and that's E3, which means that you have to be a vendor, media member, or work in the industry to attend. What that essentially means is that the next real opportunity that fans will have to play DCUO isn't until the San Diego Comic-Con, which happens to be in July. March, April, May, and June...4 months...18 or so weeks, 120 or so days...this is the amount of time that will go by before the average Joe gets his hands on DCUO again.

So, with that being the case, how will SOE choose to deal with the impending "dead zone?" How will fans react to seeing potentially less news each month that doesn't have a major convention or trade show? These are legitimate questions going forward. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I'd like to hear your thoughts on what will make your wait bearable during the next few months when there are no "prove it through play" opportunities. Is it Jens posting more pics of Aquaman wearing a speedo? Is it Gyant returning to the forums to bring us his insight? What about news on character customization? Post in the forums and let us know.

Until next time,

Deathstryker