Polishing games is important, but one former World of Warcraft and League of Legends MMO veteran believes that developers can also go too far with it – something he argues Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games have both become guilty of.
Greg Street previously served as lead systems designer on WoW and lead of the in-development Riot MMO before moving on to form his own studio, Fantastic Pixel Castle, which is making its own MMO codenamed ‘Ghost.’ Needless to say, he’s had plenty of first-hand experience with two of the most notable studios in the industry, but in a new thread on Twitter, it seems that it’s only since reading Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier’s recent book about Blizzard (Play Nice) that Street has noted “how similar the journey was of Riot to Blizzard.”
Elaborating on this, he explains that despite both of the studios having “early success by deeply understanding the gameplay of the genres in which they wanted to innovate,” they “both moved on from that success to focus so much (overly much [in my honest opinion]) on polish. Polish is enormously expensive, like nine-year dev cycles expensive.” While he acknowledges that players care about polish too, he’s uncertain if “they care enough to wait for nine years,” and claims to have seen “both studios throw away gameplay that probably hit an 85% quality bar because they thought they could hit 95% with another couple of years.”
And players DO care about polish. I just don’t think they care enough to wait for 9 years. I saw both studios throw away gameplay that probably hit an 85% quality bar because they thought they could hit 95% with another couple of years. 3/January 7, 2025
It’s not always been like this, as Street points to League of Legends itself, which was “janky as hell when it launched, but it was satisfying and offered hundreds of hours of deep gameplay.” The process of releasing something “far from perfect” and working closely on what fans actually cared about “felt like such a deep and respectful conversation with players,” he continues, adding: “It was a philosophy that I always believed in.”
This philosophy, Street says, sees studios approach “game dev from a place of humility instead of arrogance,” but he claims to have “watched both companies seemingly abandon that philosophy,” with polish having “won out over gameplay.”
As for Street’s current project, he admits that he’s unsure if his studio can get Ghost into players’ hands within five to seven years’ time, even if “the trajectory is good so far.” With that said, he contemplates that “maybe the real test will be the second game. How do you avoid it doubling dev length?” Wrapping things up, he says that his focus, for now, will remain on “gameplay > polish, player value > endless dev timelines.”