Call of Duty: Elite - what Activision learned from a difficult launch

Elite

social gaming service for the modern war has had some teething problems since its launch in November. We spoke with Daniel Suarez, Activision president, vice-president of production, what they have learned and things will

Call of Duty: Elite has been a controversial concept since its announcement earlier this year. The social networking service that provides game data, statistical analysis and community features for players of CoD, originally attracted to the ridiculous, apparently looking for players to collect other social features publishers offered in exchange for nothing.

Then, of course, it became clear that the Elite service offers two levels: Most of the content of social statistics and would be free, while competition and the elements of the video would be part of a premium, with free access to all DLC later.

So when Modern Warfare 3 launched Elite collapsed. The developer of services, studies Beachhead, finds its infrastructure could not cope with the massive demand. Now, things go much more smoothly, with millions of users and the increasing diversity of groups and skills to participate in.

What did you learn

Activision rocky start this pilot project, and what remains to be done? When will we promised to the mobile application, or version elite PC gamers? In an exclusive interview Wednesday night that these questions to Daniel Suarez, Activision president, vice-president of production. That's what he had to say.

Thus, one million premium subscribers in one week. Did you know that

When we planned the service they knew would be big and popular. If you look at the growth of subscription services like Netflix and Hulu, it took a long time to reach one million users. Another thing we must keep in mind is that it is actually more than 5 million subscribers to the free version, and that number increases significantly every day. Yes, it exceeded our expectations

He was gentle places, right?

We certainly had more pain! But in the last two weeks, the service is back to his feet and began to unlock new features. The themes were emerging in the community, but we had to deal with as they arise, we read what people say on Twitter and Facebook - we have to ensure that it is to have the best possible experience, and we know that in the first couple of weeks that were not.


What were the main problems, then?

There were problems with the age of aliasing, people under 18 were not able to enter some platforms [the U.S. classification system works differently by age, and the game can be sold to minors]

, there were problems with the opening of accounts. Part was the number of people entering certain features were tested for the stress of his popularity. But we live, we get everything arranged as soon as possible. We have extended the premium subscription for a month, and we will look for ways to keep the community with us and enjoy the service.

But, if you knoew the service would be popular, why fall so quickly? Have you done a post-mortem of the first week?

Of course, we talked about. There were some fundamental problems associated with gating. We had to do with the registration process and the other was in fact the registration and use of the service. The analogy I use is to enter a football stadium - there is a bottleneck in the parking lot, then there is another reality, through the turnstiles in the game. There was a huge tidal wave of people who register after the release of MW3, which began at midnight, Australia, where the game was released, then crossed the Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, United United Kingdom and the U.S. East Coast, Midwest, West Coast ... we have seen hundreds if not thousands of millions of people filling their files at once, and stopped the service. To be sent within 48 hours.

The other major problem was a matter of infrastructure as to how the database was on active duty in the service of content for people. We worked on it since the week of release. What we did first was that only premium users and the service could swallow numbers and proof. However, the week before, which left us all that the priorities so that anyone can enter the service.

Now, with millions of people using the service, there are some outstanding issues. Some people can not successfully connect to Facebook, we are achieving them via Twitter and our customer service people. We use update patch for the service approximately every 48 hours.

trends Elite So now it's up and running, we assist in the development? Are there areas of services that make the greatest number?

• course. The summary page of the race is probably the most popular. The trend we see is that people are going to play MW3 for a while, then go to Elite to see how they did in each game, you'll see in the heat maps are to see in your stats with a particular firearm. Another key element is the function of groups and clans. We have generated over 150,000 clans, and many more are added every day. This is an area of ??more features to come online Elite in the next 30 days, provide to-do clans in general. Come to the launch of operations specific clans soon.
• And things go on the elite mobile applications? How does it work

Well, not all the experience you get on the web? We have included a number of features that make more sense for mobile. Your one-page summary of the race there, it can be seen in recent games, the cards of the heat, there is a difficult track, so you can see all the challenges that exist within the specific career and see that you are close to complete certain tasks. The feature that will probably get used to the maximum is to create a. You will be able to create new classes in the subway or in the park, shift the burden of expectation, then push in the game the next time you enter this new output load will be there, ready to accept and game.

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