[MUD-Dev] Metrics for assessing game design

[Ron Gabbard]

From: "Jeremy Gaffney" <jgaffney at ncaustin.com>
> From: Ron Gabbard [mailto:rgabbard at swbell.net]

>> If you're looking for a good metric for evaluating anticipated
>> acceptance of a product by a specific market (very important as
>> Matt pointed out above), do some reading on factor analysis and
>> conjoint analysis.  While this is about the best tool used by
>> marketing people in planning product development, it's still
>> going to have some shortfalls in dealing with MMOGs as it doesn't
>> handle subjective/qualitative (artsy) features well, e.g.., is
>> the gameworld dark and gloomy or oompa-loompa-land?  (Focus
>> groups are typically used for these types of features.)  However,
>> if you're looking for a tool to help determine the acceptance of
>> a game based on PK+ vs. PK- , number of playable races,
>> skill-based vs. class-based character progression, etc. in your
>> target market, these tools could be extremely helpful if used
>> properly.

> The metric I've used to separate marketing effects from product
> quality is:

>   Number of users at game launch: marketing & product quality
>   (primarily as how it impacts PR/beta)

>   Retention rate after launch: entirely product quality (except
>   the factor of how it matched users' expectations grown through
>   marketing) Growth rate after launch: Product quality and
>   marketing.

Retention rate is a great way of determining product quality.
Unfortunately, that metric can only be measured after the years and
millions of dollars of development have already been invested.
You'll get no better measure of how well a game is accepted by the
customer than to actually make it and provide it in "full release"
mode where the customer is paying for it.  It is just extremely
risky and inefficient to do things that way as going back and adding
to/changing the code is a lot more difficult than including a
particular feature in the game during initial design and
development.

Cheers,

Ron
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