The Bottom Line

Issue date: 4/11/07 Section: The AT Wire

Being a gamer living in the United States has its perks.  We may not have all that is available to gamers living in Japan, but we are definitely better off than gamers in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.  It may just be the fact that I’m not used to getting the short end of the stick, but after this past week I think I’m starting to understand how those other gamers feel.

I’ve been looking for a massively multiplayer online game to play since I’ve been overloading on Battlefield 2142 and Medieval II: Total War.  Unfortunately, I’m not all that apt to play any more fantasy MMOs.  Unfortunately for me, and the rest of the gaming community, MMOs might as well just be fantasy games because the number of non-fantasy style MMOs can probably be counted with two hands. 

I found a game called Neocron 2: Beyond the Dome of York, a game developed by the German-based game developer Reakktor Media Ltd.  It is a sci-fi MMO that resembles the dark world found in the movie Bladerunner.  I almost bought the first Neocron, but I decided to wait since I was against paying monthly fees.  Now, with Neocron 2, I’m older and able to pay those monthly fees if I want to, so I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity to play it.  My experience with this game, however, has been filled with so much frustration that you would think I’ve played it for hours, but in reality, I haven’t even successfully registered an account yet!

Like many MMOs, Neocron 2.2 offers a free trial of the game for a short time.  Their 10-day free trial requires you to download the game, which is nearly 2 GB, and then register an account with them that requires you to have a credit card.  I went ahead and downloaded the file overnight and installed it the next morning.  Then I tried to create an account for the free trial and ran into some problems.  Apparently, PayPal doesn’t “like” U.S. accounts trying to register for this game.  I spent about three hours modifying my PayPal settings, and adjusting the various payment methods; but by the end I hadn’t gotten any further in the process.  I e-mailed Neocron 2.2’s tech support only to receive a response in broken English saying something like “We’re working on it, be patient.”

I checked the community forums for the game and found that not only were people in the U.S. having difficulties getting registered for the game, but they weren’t receiving in-game support from the game developers.  One American player created a topic titled, “Hey Reakktor, Americans play this game too,” in which he talked about how in-game events were always scheduled for times when the European players were online, but never when non-European players were online.  After several replies, many in support of his complaint, the forum moderators closed the topic, effectively saying “tough shit.”

To help you, the reader, understand that these complaints aren’t just the frustrated ramblings of a spoiled American gamer, let’s look at Neocron 2.2 from a business perspective.  The game is designed to make money, not just through retail but also through monthly fees.  Neocron 2.2 is an upgrade that was released in February, and with this release, the game received a decent amount of advertisement.  For example, Xfire is running ads on their website and through their instant messaging client about Neocron 2.2. 

Filefront.com and Gamespot.com, two of the major hosts for the Neocron 2.2 free-trial client download, have recorded over 3,000 downloads combined since February.  Upon further examination of the game through the community forums, I found that people complained about how there would only be 300-400 people logged into Neocron 2.2 during peak times!  Of course, these are peak times in Europe, which is when the rest of us (non-Europeans) are either in school or at work.  Now, who do you think is responsible for a majority of the client downloads?  Well, I can tell you that it definitely wasn’t the Russians or Germans. 

Why in the Hell would a company not properly support non-European players when, at least since February, there seems to be a huge amount of non-European gamers interested?  Not only does this neglect hurt the developers, but it also hurts the Neocron 2.2 community, which would thrive with a larger player-base.  From a business perspective, this is as absurd as opening a restaurant in Africa and placing a sign out front that says, “Canadians Only!”

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