Last week we saw the launch of Wander, an ambitious indie MMO for PlayStation 4 and PC. Instead of carrying the conventional trappings of the genre, it sought to create a more relaxed, collaborative experience centred around the exploration of an archipelago of lush tropical islands. Wander had buckets of potential, its hooks agitating my burgeoning need for a fresh online console experience.
Just minutes into the game, however, my hopes were dashed. Not only had Wander fallen short of expectation, it was barely functional, quite rightly making it one of the worst downloadable titles ever released on a PlayStation system. Perplexed and somewhat frustrated, we reached out to the developer for answers, convinced that something had gone terribly wrong during Wander’s road to launch.
Despite the inevitable launch week chaos, Loki Davison – the game’s mastermind and creative director – was more than happy to discuss its problematic launch. Although fatigued, and fearing how his brainchild would be received, Loki was humble in his response – assuring us straight away that a number of fixes were in the pipeline.
Aside from working on the game himself, over the past two years Loki has enlisted the help of a part-time programmer, art director, character designer, musicians, and other key development staff while also juggling Wander’s marketing and finance.
Quite bluntly, we asked whether he believed the game was genuinely fit to launch. For context, when playing Wander last week, we ran into a number of severe glitches while wrestling with some of the game’s mind-boggling design choices. Loki’s response was two-pronged, highlighting the nature of what it means for a game to be classed as an MMO as well the pressures placed upon him and the team to deliver their first multiplatform launch.
Before that, however, he confirmed that fixes are on their way:
“It’s the first release, there are bugs which we are working as fast as we can to get fixed. It’s 4am here and this is my first break from coding. There are two coders on the team, one of them me and the other part-time. We’re collecting as much feedback as possible and acting on it as fast as we can. Bug fixes are our first priority.”
When describing Wander in a much broader context, Loki likens it to big-name massively multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft and EVE.
“Wander is something we want to keep expanding on, similar to any other MMO, releasing regular updates and additions. World of Warcraft, EVE and all the other MMOs I can think of released with a much smaller feature set than they have now. I always hoped that Wander would continue to grow and evolve with a community of players so it wouldn’t be “finished” but would keep changing and growing.”
Although it’s clear to see what Loki has envisioned for Wander and its future, it’s hard not to point out that – although not finished – games like WoW and EVE were actually serviceable at launch. Without the sheer manpower behind Blizzard or CCP Games, the Wander team were forced to strike a balance between delivering on Loki’s original concept and working within a reasonable timeframe and budget.
“Obviously, compromises had to be made. Game development is all about compromises. We wanted long draw distances and dense beautiful rainforest instead of small, tightly controlled corridors. We wanted to launch before E3 and had no way to realistically load test the PS4 version. We just don’t have enough test kits to test 100 people in an area at once. So there was testing and hoping. We also focused money on things that perhaps aren’t the standard choices. I wanted to make sure the rainforest sounded like a rainforest and there were live musicians and not synths performing the music.
“We tested the game extensively, as did Sony. When you have 3 testers and 4 kits it’s hard to test what it’ll be like with 1000 people at once. We were able to fix these issues very quickly on Steam. patches on PS4 take a lot longer.”
If you follow Loki and the team on Twitter, it’s clear to see that they are working around the clock to address problems. Aside from regular patch updates, they’ve taken questions from players, both through social media and during live streaming sessions on Twitch.
What comes next, Loki says, is refining some of the game’s features to make Wander a more approachable, relaxing experience. Paraphrasing what he told us, the team is currently looking to implement better guidance for new players instead of allowing them to aimlessly roam the game’s vast open world. These improvements include a much-needed fix for the game’s language system as well as rethinking the world map.
The first post-launch update is due to release later this week on PlayStation 4. We’ll be following Wander on its road to recovery so be sure to keep an eye out.
We’d like to thank Loki for taking the time to answer our questions in the midst of what was surely a hectic week for him and the team.
Youles
It’s nice that Loki took the time to respond, and I sympathise with him working around the clock – but in the end none of that is really the consumers’ problem.
People have paid for a product which should work yet this industry – due to the complexity of the products I’m sure – seems the only one where it’s deemed acceptable for sell a “mostly” finished produced, which will get fixed somewhere down the line. I think most gamers are happy to accept this (if the game is 90% done), but going by TSA’s earlier opinion of this game Wander clearly wasn’t ready and perhaps should have been delayed.
I wondered the other day whether some games will start to get 2 reviews, an “around release” review, and one 6 months later. Using DriveClub as an example, people seem to say the game is far, far better than it was at release, and it seems to me that it’s sold pretty well. However, some games – possibly Wander – that take the “release now, patch later” attitude may not be so lucky and it could end up being more damaging. People may hear about the state of the game on release, avoid it, and never hear that it’s a great experience a few months later.
Jim Hargreaves
Agreed. As much as I sympathise with Loki and the team, they let Wander out of the stable too early. Although we’re getting used to this release model on PC (via Early Access), it’s a foreign concept to most console gamers.
As for your review query, that’s another valid point. We didn’t want to score Wander because we were simply unable to access most content due to game-breaking bugs, instead advising gamers not to purchase. If things improve over the coming months, we will post another review/follow-up to see if things have gotten better.
Youles
I think that’s a very fair thing to have done, with regards to not giving a review score – you don’t want to necessarily deter people from buying or giving it a low score if it will improve – however by releasing games prematurely this is exactly what such developers risk happening!
Youles
Early Access would be great on consoles. Presumably if I game isn’t finished in time yet a developer/publisher insists on pushing it out the door on a specific date, they could label it “Early Access” last-minute and charge a smaller fee (with an upgrade fee later on). This would protect them and their IP, the consumers would probably be more forgiving and it would aid in testing the game when it’s out in the open (particularly if smaller developers seems to have limited resources to enable appropriate testing).
Tuffcub
I’d love to come back to Wander in 6 months time and find a gorgeous sunny island, with no glitching graphics, a useful map and some people to play with. It has the potential to be a great time waster.
Jones81
I heard he was too busy arguing with Thor to focus on the development, hopefully he will use the power of his magic staff to fix the bugs though
Eldur
Zing!
Starman
Credit to him for acknowledging it’s problems. Sounds like the studio took on too big a task.
bunimomike
With absolute respect to Loki (and the team), they’ve simply bitten off more than they can chew. They should have concentrated on an Early Access build on Steam and the brought a more polished version to the consoles later.
If that wasn’t possible then you have to rethink your initial strategy and whether the game needs to be put on hold (or even started) in the first place. Foresight and hindsight can be quite the pain in the arse at the best of times but this was WAY too ambitious.
spacedelete
worse download game on PlayStation ? overexagerating abit ? it can’t be worse than AMY. that was a genuinely bad game.
Jim Hargreaves
Bad, yes, but functional.