Feldon 
Sony Online Entertainment has a rocky history with third parties. Whether the responsibilities weren’t well-defined, the contracts were not clear, or these companies grossly oversold their capabilities, we’ve seen example after example of relationships with external companies which have not paid off for SOE or for their customers.
- LiveGamer — SOE contracted with this company to allow EQ2 players to buy and sell in-game items, currency, and characters. Controversially, the change was forced onto existing non-LG servers. Also, contacting LG customer service was always a gamble. The program was not successful and the partnership was dissolved to pave the way for Free-to-Play.
- AFK Interactive — SOE hired this relative newcomer to mobile app development to develop an EverQuest II Mobile app for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. The app barely worked, requiring repeated logins every few seconds, and was extremely limited in the quantity and quality of information displayed. The app stopped working altogether shortly thereafter. AFK Interactive is now defunct.
- HP Print-On-Demand — SOE heard the call from players to make Posters and Art Prints available of some of the incredible concept art and artwork endemic to SOE’s games. To this end, SOE partnered up with HP to provide a print-on-demand service. However the poster choices never grew beyond a small pool, and the website went offline within a year.
After the jump, more partnerships, and a possible solution!
No list would be complete without…
- LucasArts — While SOE is certainly not alone in suffering at the hands of schizophrenic bosses who made disastrous design decisions at the eleventh hour, the New Game Experience and Combat revamp of Star Wars Galaxies turned a character-building odyssey (the months-long voyage of discovery and heartache required to even begin training as a Jedi) into a day one character creation choice. A richly detailed game was boiled down to the essentials and favorite gameplay styles were eliminated entirely. After years of strife and hard-learned lessons about observing player feedback (as well as a suicide), the game was sunsetted in the midst of a popularity bump to make way for a beautifully executed but inch-deep MMO from 800 pound gorilla Bioware.
The verdict is still out on other partnerships SOE has forged:
- Vivox — While some players continue to report difficulty with the voice chat built into SOE games and provided by Vivox, others have had good results and are happy to no longer need third party addons like Teamspeak and Ventrilo.
- ZAM — This partnership was a bit controversial in the EQ2 community, partly due to confusion over their then-parent company, and partly due to some of the advertisers that appeared on their sites. Also, the speed at which EQ2 data appeared on EQ2 ZAM was less than impressive. It’s our understanding that there was a long interval between the surprise announcement of this partnership at Fan Faire and when the data started flowing. It took additional months before the data was complete enough to begin implementing some of the announced features. Most regrettably, character customization (shopping for equipment upgrades or viewing the spells, quests, etc. for a character) never materialized. On the quest side, ZAM is always ready to go on launch day with complete writeups of new solo and tradeskill quest lines added in content updates and expansions.
- Wikia — The advertising on Wikia sites is enough to give even the best Popup blocker fits, but once the content loads, EQ2 Wikia has thousands of quest writeups, character progression timelines, even a few heroic and raid zone walkthroughs. Dependent upon volunteer contributions, Wikia content often lags behind ZAM, yet it is easy to edit (ZAM also has editing capabilities) and the navigation within quest chains is arguably smoother.
- StoryBricks — After an unsuccessful attempt to kickstart a game whose “killer app” was incredibly powerful content-development tools that would empower players to design and build entire dungeons, NPCs, encounters, zones, and so forth, StoryBricks went quiet. Then shortly before last year’s SOE Live, StoryBricks confirmed on Twitter that they were working hard on lending their revolutionary AI technology to EverQuest Next. Little is known about how well their ideas are meshing with SOE’s, but they have given a few general interviews on the future of player-made content.
Is there an alternative?
So with said history, it would seem prudent to consider hiring talented individuals who are available to work for a reasonable income (certainly less than the cost of living-adjusted salary mandated by a California address), and fully capable of performing the tasks requested with minimal oversight. Yet such individuals have been refused these opportunities for one reason: SOE will not hire employees unless they relocate to San Diego (or Austin for DCUO).
Some might see this article as motivated self-interest. I certainly would not decline an offer to work on EQ2Players or similar sites for other SOE games part- or full-time. But I think SOE is missing a huge opportunity to get fresh perspectives from designers, developers, and programmers who work outside the SOE ecosystem or even outside the country.
Hiring a Remote Position should always be a special case and should require approval from a top manager, but the idea of hiring people who only travel to the home office once or twice a month for meetings should be a refreshing option, not an automatic “nope”. I cannot count how many times I have communicated with an EQ2 developer who was on their way to a meeting or had just left a meeting. Office Space, as well as the series The Office immortalized the absurdity of meetings about having too many meetings, but some of these stories ring true in even the most progressive corporate environment.
SOE has seen the power of player-contributed content with Player Studio. Allowing creative people to spread their wings and only check in periodically would not only permit incredible contributions, but it seems a good fit for Sony Online’s choice of industry. Let’s turn the page and consider Remote Positions as a real alternative!
Feldon, I think SOE has some remote Customer Representatives now for Spanish, German and French…
I believe their German rep is in San Diego. Not sure on the others.
Good editorial and spot on imo.
oh and btw the pizza hut deal… /pizza LOL
Have fun get lootz.
There are a few positions that we can contract out. Within Community our International Community Reps, moderators and a couple of contract writers work from home, but anyone involved in critical day to day operations, such as Community Managers, work FAR more efficiently in office.
Most of us have the ability to work from home on occasion, and I have certainly done so when I have a bad cold, am at a conference, etc…. but there is simply no substitute for the ability to speak to folks in person, attend meetings in person, follow up quickly on matters, in person.
When I am out of office, I am connected to my colleagues via skype, email and text, but can’t WAIT to get into office again. It’s just more efficient to work with the team and internal partners in person.
As Feldon pointed out, we have partnered with several offsite companies in the past, and will continue to do so. They tend to provide specific, packaged services and communication is always one of the challenges. They’re a different kettle of fish!
Sorry Feldon. I guess we need to wait for advances in hologrammic projections to replace the in-person aspect! Besides, SD is nice. REALLY nice. =)
~Brasse
I disagree about less work getting done by remote employees.
I work at a medium sized telecom company and our dev office is in austin with 6 devs and 4-5 others in remote locales. Everyone else is either in Denver or Dallas. For the most part, nearly everything is done remotely. Only our direct management is in our office. Everyone else we work closely with to design, troubleshoot, and deploy projects are all in different offices.
In the past I’ve considered applying for job at SOE, but there are a few things that make me real hesitant. I would most definitely move heaven and earth to get a job at a game company (it’s my dream job.) This includes selling our austin house to buy one in or around SD. In fact, I was about to start bugging Nandy about a job last year.. Until the SOE layoffs hit.
I am the main provider for my family and cannot afford to sell my home to buy one elsewhere only to be laid off within a year or so. I did that once with Be, Inc in Menlo Park and I cannot do that to my family again.
When you’ve posted about jobs in the past I’ve offered to work from your Austin office, but that would only be viable if one was hired for a DCUO specific position. Seems odd that even from an SOE office that one couldn’t work with other teams in the other office. I guess I’m too used to conference call meetings w/ shared desktops.
I worked for a huge international company where they work with virtual teams. I agree that there are challenges in getting peolpe to communicate effectively, and it is not always easy to feel ‘connected’ with the team.
Yet it is supprising that SOE, whose core business is to create a online platform where people connect and collaborate at levels far beyond business projects, can not apply those virtual team principles to their business. I mean how weird is that?
I strongly disagree with the assumption that this article presents. I do not think that you can draw the conclusion that several less than successful outsourcing or partnering initiatives (some which though you rightfully suggest that the verdict is still out on) can be or would have been solved by hiring remote or WAH employees.
Note: there is a difference between a FTE which I think is what this article is referencing and other employment states such as contractor or a vendor.
I believe that those two items (SO / Partnering and Off-site employees) are two very different beasts and the initiative, motivation, and driving factors for doing each is very different. Along with how you implement and support those two different types of relationships.
And while, yes, this article is tagged as Commentary, it does seem to push one specific agenda of the Author’s. I half expected to see a .PDF of someone’s resume at the conclusion of it.
On at least two occasions, I have been encouraged to apply to work for SOE by a top level person there. And in both cases, I was told that I would need to move to San Diego, uprooting my entire life and also disrupting the life and career of my partner. Not gonna happen.
But please tell us more about how EQ2Players and the rest of SOE’s websites benefit from being developed exclusively in-house.
As a professional developer, who has been developing software for 15+ years, I think I have some insight to share. The first thing to remember is that remote employees present challenges that are special to their circumstances. It has nothing to do with the capabilities of the employee or the quality of their work.
The first challenge is that they have to be able to connect to your network securely and consistently. This is a cost that cannot be avoided. A company has to pay for and provide for (and verify) a work environment that allows the employee to be productive. The work environment includes a computer and a workspace that is not harmful (desk with proper seating, etc). These things cannot be ignored because the employee is remote. Some companies are unable or unwilling to take on this cost.
The second challenge is management. Remote employees still need to be managed. Managing remote employees is more challenging than managing local employees. Team collaboration is not as easy with remote employees. Not all companies have people who are talented enough to manage or collaborate in this environment.
So regardless of the talent and the capabilities of the potential employee, it’s not always in the best interest of the company to take them on as a remote employee. And Feldon, there’s no doubt you’re quite talented. But that doesn’t mean the company you want to work for is talented enough to have you as a remote employee.
Brasse has already said that there is secure remote capability as they occasionally work from home, so your first point is moot.
As to the second, unless one is micromanaging, there should be very few issues with managing a remote individual that daily phone calls, conference calls, and/or shared desktops cannot handle.
I hope you realize that “occasionally work from home” and “working from home” are two very different things when it comes to employment law, rules and regulations. For example, there are OSHA regulations that cover “work at home” employees. Most people don’t realize this (and other employer responsibilities) and think it’s a piece of cake to work from home. I wish it was, but it isn’t.
As for management, that is a topic that most people can speak volumes on. I’m sure we’ve all experienced managers that offered us challenges. But it is one more important consideration that companies have to take into account when deciding if an employee can work from home.
My point being, working from home isn’t the simple thing that most people make it out to be. And unfortunately, with the examples of Yahoo! and other major technical companies, it is becoming less and less an option available for employees. And in most cases it’s not about the employee, rather it’s about the costs (financial and otherwise) the company has to take on to allow it to happen.
To an extent, but there is no way the price differential is so high that it’s cheaper to double someone’s salary by moving them from the Carolinas to San Diego vs. just letting them work from home.
I’ve worked at various levels in companies that have gone through these arguments at great expense.
Company culture is the #1 driver behind why remote staffing will or won’t work. If a company and its people want to see your face to connect with you and your ideas then any other argument is moot.
Even when you do have a receptive environment the types of work that can remotely happen efficiently is limited. It has to be very easily measured and somewhat modular. This is especially true if security is a concern. To achieve this level of insulation, transparency and inclusion is on par with hiring consultants. As a matter of fact, in one telecom company I worked for we set up an internal “firm” for remote workers doing high volume publishing work. It was eventually outsourced to India to reduce the internal management overheads. I’m not sure that investment ever paid off.
At my current company we have many satellite offices where field staff are located close to the physical asset they support and management is located in the capitol cities. We have every virtual team tech you can think of yet we still spend huge money on travel. Face to face is how my current company works; it’s the culture.
The ability of a company to be certain they’ve met their obligations to you as a direct employee is very limited or impossible unless every satellite office is equally equipped and staffed. Some companies relax their duties when using contacted labour, some do not. Either way I’d argue it’s not purely a financial decision as mentioned above. It’s mostly, from what I’ve experienced, about what types of interactions the people in the organisation work best with and whether they are open to the very challenging task of changing their comfortable and proven operating mode for another.
Incidentally, I’ve seen remote staff (both individual and satellite offices) work, and I’ve seen them fail miserably. My guess is that a company like SOE would only be willing to take the risk when their needs compel them.
This could make interesting conversation at FF I’m sure.
FYI: I’d LOVE to live in San Diego. My favourite city, so far.
Some of that sounds like overregulation and policies that inhibit rather than enable work. Much of EQ2U was developed in the wee hours of the night or on weekends whenever inspiration struck. You’re right that it can be difficult to measure output. A figure which has frequently been bandied about is that programmers deliver only 10-12 lines of finished code per day. There were days I delivered 2-300 lines of code and other days when I just thought about the best way to do things or made mockup after mockup that went nowhere. Item Popups and Alternate Advancements were each developed in about 30 hours of development over a long weekend.