Dark
Age of Camelot
was the best-selling computer game in the United States for the week of
October 7, 2001, and was still comfortably in the top five when I wrote
this. This Postmortem is an overview of how this successful title was
conceived and developed. My role on the project was as the game's producer.
Mythic Entertainment has been developing online games as a company since
1995 - forever in this field - but the company's founders had made online
games even before then. In fact, as a company, we probably have more experience
than any other company in developing online games of all types - over
the years we have developed role-playing games, first-person shooters,
top-down spaceship shooters, and strategy games. When I last wrote a Postmortem
it was back in May 1998 for Aliens Online, our online first-person
shooter based on the well-known Alien movies.
After Aliens Online, a nonaccelerated game, we created our first
3D-accelerated game, Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict. During that
project, we developed a relationship with NDL, makers of the NetImmerse
3D engine API toolkit. We learned a lot about 3D engine development over
the course of that project and became very comfortable with software and
art development in this environment. We finished Spellbinder, which
went on to be a mildly successful Internet shooter, and it still has a
small but loyal following.
After completing
the Spellbinder project, we decided to create a graphical online
role-playing game to compete with the then-new wave of online RPGs such
as Ultima Online and Everquest, which were taking traditional
text-based games and adding a graphical front end, with very successful
results. Over the years, we had developed several nongraphical online
role-playing games, including Dragon's Gate and Darkness Falls:
The Crusade. Because of our experience developing RPGs, we knew that
we had to have a slightly different slant on our new title in order to
distinguish it from the RPGs that were already on the market. Darkness
Falls: The Crusade (DFC) featured a built-in player-versus-player
(PvP) conflict in which three different teams, called Realms, fought each
other for control of magical artifacts, known as Idols. We really liked
this concept, which served to keep DFC players hooked on the game - especially
because no other online game featured such team-based conflict as a core
part of the game design. So, in late 1999, we decided to make a graphical
version of DFC. The project was dubbed "Darkness Falls 3D,"
and we began preliminary work researching client engine and server technology.
We were proceeding along under the DFC3D concept until our president,
Mark Jacobs, came up with the idea of basing the game, at least partially,
on the Arthurian legends. It was a great idea, since the stories of King
Arthur are in the public domain, which meant we could use them with no
fear of licensing issues. Of course, because the game was based on the
idea that three Realms were in conflict, we quickly came up with the idea
of basing the other two Realms on Norse Viking myths and Celtic Irish
legends, respectively. Having the myths and legends of three cultures
gives Camelot the feel of being three games in one, since each Realm has
different races, classes, guilds, terrain, and monsters.
Because everyone knows what happened in Arthurian England, we based the
game after Arthur's death and developed a back story of conflict among
the three Realms. The game was rechristened Dark Age of Camelot, and around
January 2000 we began the project in earnest. A year and a half and untold
numbers of Monty Python jokes later, we finished the game.
The initial versions of Dark Age of Camelot used the rights for
a tabletop role-playing game called Rolemaster as a basis for the class
and spell systems. Not long into the project, the company that created
Rolemaster, Iron Crown Enterprises, filed for bankruptcy, and we lost
the rights. This turned out to be good for us, however, because we were
no longer required to adhere to a set of rules based on the license -
although we did have to scramble for about a week to rename and retune
spells and classes and otherwise clear Rolemaster content out of the game.
By the summer of 2000, we had nearly our entire team in place. We had
about 25 developers working full-time on the project - quite a small number
compared to other online RPGs, but our existing technology allowed us
to reduce substantially the amount of technical programming staff required.
We had five programmers, ten world developers, seven artists, and several
other people working on the game.
Rob Denton, Mythic's vice president and chief technical brain, was responsible
for all client and server programming, as well as the client/server messaging
that tied the two together. His input was critical during design discussions,
as he could tell us whether an idea would work or not. He immediately
categorized features into "doable," "not doable,"
and the dreaded "on the list," which meant that it could be
done, but he wouldn't commit to it. Brian Axelson was in charge of server
programming as well as design of the game's combat system - a critical
component in a PvP-centric game. Jim Montgomery provided Camelot's client
interface coding and also designed and coded the game's magical spell
system.
CJ Grebb and Lance Robertson led the art team. CJ was responsible for
the game's look and feel, while Lance handled figure modeling and animations
and managed the team's deadlines. Their team used 3DS Max and Character
Studio to create Camelot's character and monster models and animations.
The character models were technically advanced, as each in-game character
has several different parts buried in it that can be turned off and on
by the game. So, each model can have a helmet head and a regular head
(with hair) without having to load in a new model. Mike Crossmire created
the game's spells in 3D Studio, tweaking the NetImmerse system to display
animated spells with spectacular results.
The other major group in Camelot's development was the world team, led
by Colin Hicks. This group was responsible for quests, monster placement,
object placement, and just about everything else having to do with creating
the world of Dark Age of Camelot. Camelot's economy was designed
by Dave Rickey. This economic system ensures that players must continue
to spend money as they rise in level, which limits the amount of money
that stays in the game. Dave and Mark Jacobs designed Camelot's trade
skill system, which enables players to make armor, weapons, and other
objects in the game - all tied to the economic system.
Among the myriad tasks that I did as a producer (writing, designing, persuading,
arguing, and such), my job was to make sure all the teams worked together.
I hosted an almost-daily morning meeting (at the wretched hour of 8:30
a.m.) where Colin, Rob, CJ, Lance, and I got together to make sure that
we were all on the same page. I was also responsible for maintaining the
master game client - all files added to the game had to be given to me,
so I could verify they worked and then integrate them with the rest of
the game.
For the game's sound and music, we contracted with Womb Music, based in
Los Angeles, which had provided music for some of our previous titles.
Rik Schaffer, the main guy at Womb, composed a wonderful soundtrack that
consisted of several long main scores, as well as many shorter pieces
in the style of Celtic, Norse, and old English folk songs, adding a sense
of depth and quality to the world.
What Went Right
1. Community management/ beta program. From the beginning of the project, we knew we had precious few dollars available for marketing, and that our best chance to capture public attention would be to have a big presence on the various role-playing fan sites around the Internet. One, the Vault Network, provided us with some message board space, a news page, and a couple of moderators, and we were off and running.
We devoted
a lot of time over the year and a half that Dark Age of Camelot
was in development to interacting with the future fans of the game. We
hired a community relations manager whose sole job was to read different
message boards and report back to us what was happening in the community.
From the beginning, we took our fans seriously and made many tweaks and
additions to the game based on their commentary and ideas.
2. No bureaucracy. Since the founding of Mythic, we have striven
to have little bureaucracy. We have no levels, no directors, and few managers.
We have a president, a vice president, and a producer. That's it for management,
although for Camelot we did have to assign a lead world developer and
art co-leads, just to streamline the day-to-day processes of the project.
Because of this simple command chain, we experienced no power struggles.
We feel this is the best way to make a solid, cohesive game - a small
group controls what the game is and how it is presented to the user. Because
of this approach, decisions are made quickly, and features can be implemented
without an endless line of approvals and politics.
3. Smart business decisions. Our close relationship with Abandon
Entertainment was a critical factor in the success of the game. Abandon's
purchase of a minority interest in Mythic ensured that we had enough money
to fund the game from start to completion. Abandon's management was smart
enough to realize that we knew more about game development than they,
so they largely left us to make game-related decisions ourselves. They
were involved in the project, of course - some Abandon employees even
became avid beta players of the game, even though most had never played
an RPG before. Abandon's investment meant that we did not have to rely
on any outside influence in designing or creating the game, which means
that Camelot is wholly ours.
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It was essential to provide players with plenty of player-versus-environment conflict, such as with the forest giant seen here. |
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With Abandon teaming with us, Mark Jacobs, our president, decided to take
a big chance and wait until the game was almost complete before looking
for a distributor. In most cases, game companies seek out publishers,
which typically have a hand in the design and production of the game and
then distribute the game to the retail chain. With Mark's gamble, we produced
the game ourselves (with critical financial help from Abandon and business
advice from our business development person, Eugene Evans) and then looked
only for a retail distributor. This gamble could have placed us at the
end of the project with a great game but no way to get it into the hands
of our customers. It all worked out in the end, of course, with Vivendi
Universal stepping in and distributing - but on our terms.
4. Sweet serendipity. The Camelot project was helped immensely
by factors completely out of our control - in other words, blind luck.
Several high-profile online RPGs that were slated to launch at about the
same time as Camelot were either pushed off (Shadowbane) or canceled
outright (Dark Zion, Fallen Age). Also, the week we launched was
originally scheduled to be the same week as the launch of Warcraft III,
which will almost certainly be a huge seller. That project was also delayed,
which ensured that Camelot launched as the only large-scale game, and
the only online RPG, when it debuted on October 9, 2001. This little bit
of good fortune gave the game a big initial boost, as there was little
direct competition from other new products.
5. The joys of open source software and stability. Long ago, during
the development of our early titles, we decided to use Linux wherever
possible as our server back-end OS, and we kept to this same practice
when creating Dark Age of Camelot. We have extensive Linux experience
in-house, and it made sense for us to stay with a platform that we knew
could handle the task and also was, well, free.
Because running Camelot would require a considerable amount of data management,
we initially planned on using Oracle to store account and character information.
However, Oracle's quoted license fee of more than $900,000 quickly removed
them from contention. Once we got over our shock and amusement at Oracle's
pricing, we turned to a Linux-based freeware solution, MySQL, to manage
Camelot's data storage, which so far has worked admirably.
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In addition to designing Camelot's many outdoor areas, Mythic's world development team had to populate those areas with interesting encounters and dynamic quests - no small task, considering they had not one but three distinct Realms to accommodate, as well as a finite amount of creatures available to them. Work on this content is ongoing, with new updates added to the game on a regular basis. |
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Everyone developing games should at least investigate open source solutions
for their servers. It's saved us a pile of money and has been stable and
reliable. In fact, prior to Camelot's launch, it was axiomatic that MMORPGs
were unstable and prone to crashing during their first month or so. From
the outset, we were determined to buck this trend. We co-located our servers
directly at UUNET, on the network backbone, which ensured a wide network
pipe to the Internet. With this Internet connection, we can increase our
band-
width with just a few hours' notice to UUNET.
With the combination of reliable server code and a stable Internet connection-
all running on open source software - Camelot went live on October 9,
2001, with virtually no problems. That first night, the game went down
for about an hour and a half due to a database configuration problem,
but since then, the game has been remarkably solid and stable. As of this
writing, it hasn't been down due to server error for more than a few minutes
ever since the first night.
What Went Wrong
1. Development
of customer service tools. We really tried to avoid the customer service
problems that are characteristic of some recently launched online games.
One of the most important factors in keeping customer service reasonably
effective was a smooth launch. Obviously, giving players fewer problems
results in fewer calls to customer support. We did an excellent job with
the launch - it went very smoothly. However, we could have better foreseen
other parts of our customer service plans.
First, we had a lot more players in the first week after Camelot went
live than we ever could have forecast - 51,000 boxes were sold in the
first four days alone. Our forecast numbers called for a much smaller
number, and we hired our customer service staff based on this smaller
number. Also, we put off creating customer service tools until much too
late in the development cycle - some had yet to be developed when the
game went live. These missing tools really hurt the customer service staff
and added to the time it took to help each player with in-game problems.
Eventually, wait times became much too long, and customer support as a
whole suffered because of it. As I write, we still are trying to work
ourselves out of this hole.
It's difficult to gauge just how much this hurt us. Our focus on Internet
marketing gave us strong support among fans of the genre, but our lack
of commercial marketing kept our company profile low, and we never received
much mainstream media coverage because of it. Fortunately, we made up
for our slow start, and then some, by our successful presence at E3. Abandon
funded, designed, and staffed a large booth for us at the show, complete
with medieval motif and lots of giveaways.
3. O Dungeons and Cities, where art thou? The first major update
we made to Camelot's graphics engine to differentiate it from Spellbinder
was to put in the rolling terrain system that makes the world so lifelike.
We spent a long time making the outdoor areas of the game beautiful and
well stocked with monster encounters. The ease with which we did this
gave us a false sense of security when it came to developing our dungeon/city
technology.
These areas in the game required a large number of models and characters
in a much smaller space than the outdoor terrain, so creating dungeons
and cities proved to be a much more difficult job than we thought. Because
we put off doing the technical designs for the interior spaces for so
long, in the end we simply didn't get enough of them done. The game launched
with only three capital cities (one per Realm) and about 15 dungeons.
4. We have a great game but no servers! In a great "Why didn't
they tell us about this in college?" situation, we went into the
final months of the project with no credit rating. Mythic Entertainment
has been around for a long time, but we simply hadn't ever borrowed any
money, and so we didn't have a credit history. This turned out to be a
problem when we went out to lease our servers from Dell and were flatly
denied. We pointed out that we had plenty of money in the bank, but to
no avail. Dell simply wouldn't lease us the computers until we had a credit
history. In the end, we were forced to purchase the servers outright from
Dell, which obviously had a much greater impact on our bottom line.
5. Postrelease fan communication. As good as our communication
with Camelot's fan base was during the game's design and beta periods,
it began to suffer soon after the game's release. The community simply
grew too large to communicate with in the manner we had during beta, when
we simply went out to Internet message boards and posted our thoughts
and plans. With the game live, it was obvious we needed a much more coherent
way to communicate with our fans, one that would not send them to numerous
different fan sites to sift through literally thousands of messages.
This situation grew into a big problem when players became extremely frustrated
by what they perceived as a lack of communication from us. About six weeks
after release, we realized that we needed to create our own web site to
publish information about the game: release notes, plan files, server
status, Realm War status, and many other little things that we knew but
our players didn't. This web site, dubbed "Camelot Herald,"
launched the following week and so far has been a great success. Fans
of the game can now go to one web site to get all the information about
the game in one place and with no interference.
For the Ages
It was a great pleasure to create Dark Age of Camelot, as it is
the first big title that Mythic Entertainment has ever worked on. It was
a wonderful thrill to see our names on top of the best-seller lists for
those couple of weeks in October 2001, and we hope to be working on the
game for a long time to come. As long as players are interested in playing
the game, we'll be there adding content and updating it.
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Dark Age of Camelot
Publisher:
Mythic Entertainment/Abandon Entertainment/Vivendi Universal
Interactive Publishing
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