Soft Launches
I thought Magic Legends was being beta tested when it appeared on my Arc launcher along with PWE’s other games. Silly me. Apparently, I was mistaken and Magic Legends is being soft launched. Because the game is selling stuff already. To date we have an unoptimized game suffering major performance issues and lag, with the added bonus of an egregious monetisation. People aren’t happy. There are all the technical issues associated with beta testing along with the early introduction of a predatory business model. Bravo. The idea of a soft launch is to maintain a relatively low profile, compared to a traditional hard “the game is totally ready” launch. That way you can tinker with your game client in a reactive fashion and introduce new features, ensuring that you keep your current customers onboard. However, if you do it wrong, you can piss off not only your existing customer base but cause a stink that prejudices future punters.
There is reason and logic behind soft launches. If you search via Google you’ll find numerous articles about the subject extolling the virtues of this business practice. If implemented correctly, it can yield the following results:
Determine which market you’d like to target on full launch.
Pick the most suitable location for your soft launch accordingly.
Optimize your games online presence.
Measure your success in acquiring new users.
Find out at what point you’ve successfully retained a new user.
Calculate the “Life Time Value” of users.
Evaluate your monetisation model.
Determine how your users like to share your game with others.
Fix any bugs that users report.
However, if you undertake all of these with the subtlety of a blow to the head with a Teflon frying pan, you’ll more than likely fail. Because as you can see, a soft launch is a practise designed primarily to benefit the vendor of the product, rather than the customer. And customers, especially gamers like to be made to feel special (IE told a load of old bollocks). If they realise they’re just a rat in a maze, then they tend to take it personally. Which is why I prefer the old school practise of alpha and beta testing, followed by the launch of a completed product that is good to go. Sadly, that is something we seldom see in the video games genre these days. The industry has become aware that they can get away with things, despite the pushback and opprobrium that comes with pre-orders, soft launches and day one patches.
All too often the lifecycle of a game is as follows. A hyperbolic announcement followed by an excess of hype throughout the development. Early access that is a hot mess followed by a cheeky soft launch of a flawed and incomplete product. The first six months is filled with player hostility until multiple patches eventually lead to a viable release. All sane players opt for the “game of the year edition”. Overall, it’s a very unsatisfactory system. Yet despite all the cogent arguments raised against it, such practises continue to prevail and are indulged because a percentage of gamers are overwhelmed by the hype tsunami and a “take my money now” mindset. Hence it will be interesting to see whether Magic Legends has “pissed on its chips” to coin a British colloquialism, or whether six month from now, all will be forgiven or forgotten. I have a feeling it will be the latter, which is greater news for business but bad news for consumers.
