Note: The following comments are my own opinion on the post release support for a Torque based racing game and are provided only to outline to Independent Game Developers an example of the need to properly support your end user in an online market. I have made an attempt not to name the game or its developers in case they are the type that is "sue happy" and don't appreciate having their title used as an example in my story here :)
The Example:
For those of you know me, you know that I am a part owner of Max Gaming Technologies, a company that aside from developing games such as Dark Horizons - Lore also provides a free IRC service for GarageGames community members to access and use to connect to their development peers. As such I have been involved in building and supporting an online game and game community for a few years now, so you will have to understand why I have such a beef with this particular racing game.
The game itself looks to be a decent street racing game and if I had more than an understanding of grade-school deutsch it would probably be a game that I would have taken a look at an played to satisfy my curiousity on how they used Torque. But my real beef with the game though stems from in my honest opinion apparent lack of online support provided by its developers. This online support basicly consists of a 3rd party IRC connection resource that dumps its users uncerimoniously onto the IRC servers provided by Max Gaming.
Now aside from being a minor annoyance that Max Gaming has to deal with since there is no telling what server load this will bring, any support issues that will happen with us keeping the servers going and things like that which generally costs us resources (time, money and personele). We also have to contend with the less than stellar support by the racing games developers to support their own game.
As I said, the players of this game are uncerimoniously dumped onto our server and being players they start to look for someone to play against, which they cannot find. So these players begin to migrate into other channels, channels that are used for game development, and they begin to distrupt those channels by asking people if they want to play. When no one response they get mad and begin to demand that someone plays with them, so much so that it gets to the point that politely saying "this isn't a gaming channel this is a game development channel" does not work and the users need to be removed. The end result is that you have a grumpy gamer who may or may not want to check out your game or game demo ever again and you have grumpy game developers who, like me, are fed up with this crap.
So what can an indie game developer learn from this poor example of post-release support:
1. Host your own services. If you cannot host your own servers contact someone who can and setup an arrangement with them. Feeloading off of someone elses servers is never a good idea and lacks sound business knowledge IMHO.
2. Host your own servers. Players need to find games to play in. As such you need at least one dedicated server running 24/7 (or more if your game is really popular).
3. Spend Time In Game. After you release your game, your goal from this point on is to make the game look active and fun and this is done by sitting at your PC and playing the game and chatting with users. This ends up making the end users feel as though there is an active community, that people actually play your game and that you as the developer are actively involved in supporting it and listening to your end users.
4. Spent time online in forums or chat rooms. You need to let your community know that you are in charge and actively supporting them. As such just like playing in game, you also need to have a visible presense in forums or chat rooms (IRC channel)that your players are in.
5. Develop AI. AI can help make an empty server appear busier and more fun. Thus players do not need to sit around and wait for someone else to join.
6. Develop a sound multiplayer mode. For example, putting in some 3rd party resource and dumping the players into an IRC client ingame and then letting them fend for themselves is just wrong. If you are going to use an IRC client or chat room in-game limit your players only to that channel and then support the hell out of that channel.
7. The statement "If you build it they will come" does not work 100% in games. You can build the best game in the world but if your online support is dog shit it won't matter how good your game is. Games are made or destroyed by their online communities, as such if players have a bad experiance with your title, be it an online game or not, it is going to echo through the internet loudly.
