Michael Zenke was just pretending to be cynical.

This line gives it away: “I’ll tell you up front, I hope I’m wrong.”

Also the rest of the article.

He’s not even expressing skepticism that they’ll start making the game, finish making the game, not fire all the devs halfway through, vanish and only reappear on gametap years later, nor produce the next big gaming courtroom drama.

Real cynics have no hope, and they are useless. They never type more words after “DOOOOMED”. If they have a list of failures, it’s just a list, not an in depth paragraph of why a thing matters, why it’ll be a challenge to deal with, and certainly without any hints toward a solution.

Cynics see no point to all that.

But M.Z. did that. And said he was cynical. Seemed to me a writing role he played for that article, rather than a legitimate confession. (Terrible, btw. There are real people enough like that, you know?)

It’s a useful essay, I think.

Designers need to ponder those pitfalls, or at least double-check they’re on the list of things that will be hard.

Players can compile that same list, if the devs are going to be chatty they might talk about those issues. If not, they might at least acknowledge those are issues. Players can start debating the best way to tackle those and smart devs will snoop those conversations for ideas and inspiration.

CEO’s can use that to give their community managers lots to do over the holidays. Don’t want them gettin’ rusty!

Saying that a company with a beta engine will be able to build a platform and find another company to add the content by 2008 seems a bit too optimistic. Maybe they’ll prove us wrong, but if they manage to do all this in that time, I don’t think it’s going to be the game we were looking forward to. Either way, I think they’ll do it. But I’ve always been blindly optimistic.

Also, it sounds like you’re blowing off steam with this post. If you’re referring to the people on the SWG forums, that too comes with experience. And, to be fair, SOE’s a pretty shady company. So you can’t blame them for being cynical.

I mean one could just say “SWG” and that would pretty much describe almost every emotion or variable of those words.

— Sorry, I had to use that “word”. Sometimes, skepticism doesn’t work or is IGNORED from my experience…. I wish it wasn’t.

He updated it to be a little less harsh, which I appreciate. Thanks Smed!