mmorpgforum.net - Friday Updates

Behind the Scenes #4 - On the Road with Conan

- Oct 27, 2006
This week we catch up with one of our Product Managers to find out a little bit about what goes into promoting the game around the world!

Product Manager Erling Ellingsen explains whats it's like to be on the road with Age of Conan!

When thinking about game developers, you probably wouldn't envision them traveling the world, sleeping in a new bed every night and spending more time at airports than someone who works there. That's what rock stars or presidents do, right? But the truth is that making a game is more than writing code and drawing graphics - there is also the element of promotion, something both the PR people and the developers participate in.

Ever since we first announced Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, we've been going around the world showing it to executives, journalists and players. Bringing the game on the road often involves a lot of work in advance, simply because we need to create a build (a version of the game) that can run on computers outside Funcom's offices.

When creating a game of this size and complexity, there is a huge amount of people working on it. They each have their own version of the game, so to speak, which they build upon, and once in a while all the different versions are merged together to create a new version of the game. Along the way, the quality assurance department spends thousands of hours finding bugs and then passes it on to the programmers who fix them.

The point is that during the development of a game like Age of Conan, there is usually something that does not work properly -- an NPC that won't communicate, a door that won't open or a quest that won't work. As such it isn't always as stable as it would be in the finished version, and bringing a game in such a state on the road with you to show it to outside people can be a true challenge in every meaning of the word. This is a challenge all developers have to face during the development of a game.

But as we've shown at E3 in Los Angeles, the Games Convention in Leipzig and so on, our programmers do a remarkable job in giving the PR department builds of the game that both runs and looks very well.

You could ask why we don't just wait until the game is finished before we go out and show it to the world, but the fact is that spreading the word about a game at an early stage is incredibly important to its success. The gaming business is huge, and we have to fight for the attention of both players and journalists alike. Having something to show during the development is therefore very important.

When creating a build that we're taking on the road, we usually develop a version that includes the most important parts of the game so that we can show the different features without having to run through the entire game. Usually we press different keys and write different commands to jump between different locations and features in the game.

At E3 we were showing combat, mounted combat, city-building and character creation. These are all central parts of the game that are usually still being worked on as we show them! This means the programmers have to more or less "wrap up" these features so that they work - even though they may have many months left to work on them. The entire process is quite a challenge to everyone on the team. Whilst it's great to be able to show some aspects of the game to the public, its also something we have to balance against the team actually getting to work on the features on a less hectic timescale!

All that is true for most games companies, throw in the online aspects that come with an MMO such as Age of Conan and there is an added challenge! A single-player game only needs to run well on the computer you're showing it on, an Age of Conan build needs servers to run on when our full server infrastructure isn't finalized or fully installed!

That means our server team and technical staff also get some practice at seeing how the game client runs remotely. It also means that us as presenters have to learn to adapt to the odd unexpected problem, or an unstable client. It might be easier to 'fake it' with a local client and server but we always like to use those opportunities to test our server set-ups as well, it gives the technical guys unique opportunities to test connection related issues and set-ups that they don't usually get at this stage in development.

Handling occasional server crashes while showing the game to an important journalist or even a board-member is an art that everyone who shows the game at these kinds of events quickly learns!

Usually it is the guys and gals in the PR department that takes Age of Conan on the road, often traveling from city to city with only a night's stay at a hotel in each of them. They go to everything from large-scale conventions to small and intimate showing of the game in some editor's office.

While doing this can be a lot of fun simply because they all have a huge passion for what they do and Age of Conan in particular, all these travels can easily take its toll on anyone, especially when crossing the Atlantic and multiple time zones for just a day or two at a time. But it is a job that has to be done, both to satisfy the community, the media and the different people who are involved on the business level.

Doing large conventions such as E3 in Los Angeles (though that might radically change due to the restructuring of this event from next year on), is a huge project. One might not think about it just visiting the booth, but usually it involves hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours just getting it up and operational. It also takes a huge chunk of the development team's time getting version of the game running for the show.

Before I joined Funcom as a Product Manager, I used to work as a journalist in a daily newspaper, writing about games among other things. Even though I loved it, I always thought events such as E3 were incredibly hard work - especially for journalists. I always sort of envied the companies showing off the games, as it looked like such an easy job just standing there talking to people and playing the games all day.

I was wrong!

When I joined Funcom, I soon realized it's no picnic standing upright for four to six days in a row, nine hours every day, going over the same things over and over again. Not to mention the countless hours spent on planes, at airports, in hotels and even in traffic.

Don't get me wrong though: we all love doing it! It is very satisfying for us seeing the reactions of both players and journalists alike at these sorts of shows, and we always look forward to it. The feedback is also absolutely invaluable to us.

Looking at the rest of this year and next year, for the PR department, it means another batch of press tours and gaming shows that has to both planned for and attended. And even though it's usually us who venture out into the world to promote our games, we always bring with us some of the developers - after all, they're the ones actually making the game, and they too finds great pleasure in meeting both players and journalists.

Oh, and between you and me: Usually we try to spend a few hours seeing the sights of the city. So if you see someone wearing a Funcom shirt and wielding a camera, chances are that its one of us taking a breather before going to the next show on the list!