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[Crocmon]

That game developers and publishers can be just as much hipster douchebags as actual hipster douchebags when you call them on their shenanigans.

In all seriousness though, I learned that falling in love with any fiction should be done with due caution, because it can at any moment blow up in your face and all you really can do is save everybody else from the same trauma.

[Bfler]

Wasn't the last real success, not only in financial affairs, but also in a general consumer satisfaction, Dragon Age Origins. 
And how long was the development time?

Modifié par Bfler, 23 avril 2012 - 05:39 .

[Firesaber82]

Malanek999 wrote...

Firesaber82 wrote...
very well said.  That's totally how it feels.  For all the greatness thats in ME3, there's this feeling of incompleteness, and there's certainly more bugs in this last offering than the first two to warrant the feeling of it being rushed (like all the hull breaches on the Normandy..)

You really think there were more bugs than ME2? I'm not sure what game you were playing or if you are serious. ME2 was the buggiest by far. Charge has a few bugs now, it had dozens in ME2. Same with Kasumis shadow strike. Stasis was bugged, the Mattock was bugged. Biotic powers failed to take affect maybe 1 in 10 times as did cyro blast. The geography was iffy in quite a few spots. There were a few problems with flags not being set properly. I'm not sure whether ME1 or ME3 was more stable, both seem pretty stable in comparison. ME1 was a much, much less demanding game in terms of coding, but at the same time it was their first go with the engine.

yes it does feel that way. the only bug immediately noticable to me playing 2 was the getting stuck 'ontop' of the enviroment thing.  Nothing else reached out and slapped me my first playthrough. Didn't notcie abilities on companions not working as everything ended up dead anyway...

As for 3, many times characters are not facing the right way, many more graphical anomolies, I can't even begin to count the number of times in multiplayer I have fallen through the world, abilities fail to work etc.  The Normandy has a good 20 hull breaches, a bunch of architecture is missing the sides to support columns (think a 4 sided support column...having only 1 side...)...all this was noticable my very first playthrough... The Journal fails to update, the face import feature (and thats a pretty big one considering save game import is the calling card of this series next to decision making)

Mass Effect 3 was not ready.

Modifié par Firesaber82, 23 avril 2012 - 05:35 .

[Encarmine]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That Video Games shouldn't have time constraints put on them.

That's an ideal, but I'm curious how you would reconcile it with the demands of reality.

in all honesty, and not being sarcastic, but perhaps talk to Blizzard or Valve, they seem to have a deal with their publishers that lets them take however long they like in making games.

the new counter strike and new diablo3 have been in the works for a long time compared to other game makers.

Bioware and Creative Assembly are both amazing game makers who seem to be forced to release things faster than they would like, and its a massive shame as both of your companies bring 'one off' games to the market.

Regards

[TookYoCookies]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That Video Games shouldn't have time constraints put on them.

That's an ideal, but I'm curious how you would reconcile it with the demands of reality.

 

Diablo 1-3

Warcraft 1-3

Starcraft 1-2.

WoW (flames inc; still a great game; hard to argue when you have 10 million people that pay to play it..)

basically every Blizzard game ever made post viking quest or whatever it was called...  

All of those games above won Game of the year awards(other than Warcraft: orcs and humans as far as i know), despite suffering from the Blizzard slogan of: "Sorry to inform you guys, but the release of *insert future GoTY here* has been delayed due to the devs wanting to further polish the product.". When purchasing and playing the games it shows. 

Good Games ---> Commerical succes.


is much better than:  


Average Game --> Market the sh*t out of it --> short term success --> Add DLC to make up for lack of longterm playability--> More Marketing.

I wonder what they smoke at blizzard to reconcile with the constraints of reality... Hmm....

[Shaoken]

Encarmine wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That Video Games shouldn't have time constraints put on them.

That's an ideal, but I'm curious how you would reconcile it with the demands of reality.

in all honesty, and not being sarcastic, but perhaps talk to Blizzard or Valve, they seem to have a deal with their publishers that lets them take however long they like in making games.

the new counter strike and new diablo3 have been in the works for a long time compared to other game makers.

Bioware and Creative Assembly are both amazing game makers who seem to be forced to release things faster than they would like, and its a massive shame as both of your companies bring 'one off' games to the market.

Regards

As it's been continuatlly pointed out, Blizzard and Valve are not comparable in this case Blizzard has WoW and Valve has steam, both of which pump them full of enough money that they can afford to take their time with their games. That is literally Allan's point; that those two companies have a constant supply of money being brought in that allows them to take their time, while Bioware and other developers do not and thus have to release new products to get mre money.

So your examples of the new CS and Diablo 3 aren't good because both of them are being funded by the money generated through Steam and WoW, while Mass Effect 3 was essentially funded by the profits from Mass Effect 2 and nothing else.

[Shaoken]

TookYoCookies wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That Video Games shouldn't have time constraints put on them.

That's an ideal, but I'm curious how you would reconcile it with the demands of reality.

 

Diablo 1-3

Warcraft 1-3

Starcraft 1-2.

WoW (flames inc; still a great game; hard to argue when you have 10 million people that pay to play it..)

basically every Blizzard game ever made post viking quest or whatever it was called...  

All of those games above won Game of the year awards(other than Warcraft: orcs and humans as far as i know), despite suffering from the Blizzard slogan of: "Sorry to inform you guys, but the release of *insert future GoTY here* has been delayed due to the devs wanting to further polish the product.". When purchasing and playing the games it shows. 

Good Games ---> Commerical succes.


is much better than:  


Average Game --> Market the sh*t out of it --> short term success --> Add DLC to make up for lack of longterm playability--> More Marketing.

I wonder what they smoke at blizzard to reconcile with the constraints of reality... Hmm....

*shakes head*

Allan brought up the list of Blizzard games and their release dates, and they were pretty much pumping out games every year before WoW was released, with expansion packs the year after. Hence why Diablo 2 came out not that long after 1, but 3 came out over a decade later.

So Blizzard smokes the metric ****-tons of money they make off WoW because it gives them so much money they can literally afford to take their time with games while other developers have to rely on releasing games at reguar intervals to keep a steady cash-flow.

[Flammenpanzer]

ZenJitsu wrote...

I learned that with a bad enough ending, it can poison replayability of previous games. That was a new experience.

Actually, same here.

[rpgfan321]

Ah... if only ideal conditions can ever be met. But reality some times sucks.

[FatalX7.0]

Documental wrote...

that people thought EA was worst than the banks which illegally repossess homes and destroyed the US economy, than phone companies who lock people into horrendous contracts, than the companies which ship their manufacturing to third-world countries where the conditions are horrific and those that cut down forests and pollute the atmosphere.

Yeah, that's the major sticking point in me having any respect for anyone who voted EA in that poll because if you did, you are a despicable human being.

Oh and that the ending wasn't as bad as made out to be when I played it.

I think you misunderstood the point of that poll.

Also, difference in opinions.

[sporeian]

rpgfan321 wrote...

Ah... if only ideal conditions can ever be met. But reality some times sucks.

true enough....

[Shaoken]

rpgfan321 wrote...

Ah... if only ideal conditions can ever be met. But reality some times sucks.

When reality and idealism meet it's rarely reality that backs down.

[Precious Roy]

Shaoken wrote...

*shakes head*

Allan brought up the list of Blizzard games and their release dates, and they were pretty much pumping out games every year before WoW was released, with expansion packs the year after. Hence why Diablo 2 came out not that long after 1, but 3 came out over a decade later.

So Blizzard smokes the metric ****-tons of money they make off WoW because it gives them so much money they can literally afford to take their time with games while other developers have to rely on releasing games at reguar intervals to keep a steady cash-flow.

And others have pointed out that different teams inside Blizz were responsible for different IPs, so the idea of them "pumping out" games ignores the point that they do not release games until they are finished.

And the thing that really counts here, which is the least quantifiable but perhaps the most important, is the customer loyalty that Blizzard's devlopment and support engender. The story of how SC: Ghost was cancelled because they simply could not find a way to make it good enough to meet their own standards actually made the gamers I know respect Blizzard even more. When we know a studio cares enough about their reputation and their players to cancel projects at great expense to themselves, we are far more likely to talk about and purchase and enjoy the products they release in the future.

BioWare used to be in a similar position, but the entire ME3 fiasco - from Day 1 DLC to the "lots of speculation" memo - has shown that we can no longer rely on their good name as an indication of quality. Whether it's a natural turnover of brain trust, or top-down corporate interference from EA, the BioWare that we all grew up caring for is clearly on it's last legs. That's why we're all upset, why we're lashing out.

Mr. Schumacher, I'm holding the line, not just for Mass Effect, but for BioWare. I hope you find your way back to what made you great.

[Shaoken]

Precious Roy wrote...

Shaoken wrote...

*shakes head*

Allan brought up the list of Blizzard games and their release dates, and they were pretty much pumping out games every year before WoW was released, with expansion packs the year after. Hence why Diablo 2 came out not that long after 1, but 3 came out over a decade later.

So Blizzard smokes the metric ****-tons of money they make off WoW because it gives them so much money they can literally afford to take their time with games while other developers have to rely on releasing games at reguar intervals to keep a steady cash-flow.

And others have pointed out that different teams inside Blizz were responsible for different IPs, so the idea of them "pumping out" games ignores the point that they do not release games until they are finished.

Except that even then, sequals got made fairly quickly. It was only what, four years between Diablo 1 and 2? And those teams probably didn't instantly start work on the sequal as soon as the original was made? And even with the three teams they still managed to get a game released every year for quite a few years, before taking their time with Warcraft 3 and then hitting the jackpot with WoW.

You can't compare the situation almost two decades ago with today.

And the thing that really counts here, which is the least quantifiable but perhaps the most important, is the customer loyalty that Blizzard's devlopment and support engender. The story of how SC: Ghost was cancelled because they simply could not find a way to make it good enough to meet their own standards actually made the gamers I know respect Blizzard even more. When we know a studio cares enough about their reputation and their players to cancel projects at great expense to themselves, we are far more likely to talk about and purchase and enjoy the products they release in the future.

BioWare used to be in a similar position, but the entire ME3 fiasco - from Day 1 DLC to the "lots of speculation" memo - has shown that we can no longer rely on their good name as an indication of quality. Whether it's a natural turnover of brain trust, or top-down corporate interference from EA, the BioWare that we all grew up caring for is clearly on it's last legs. That's why we're all upset, why we're lashing out.

Mr. Schumacher, I'm holding the line, not just for Mass Effect, but for BioWare. I hope you find your way back to what made you great.

The issue seems to be that people are pointing at Blizzard and saying that Bioware should be like them, while ignoring the fact that Blizzard only got to be that because WoW has given them enough money to coast along for years without releasing new games, something that no other company besides Valve can afford to do.

Yes Blizzard cancelled Ghost, but they put it down for good after WoW was well off the ground and making them money. They canceled and restarted it several times sure and that shows they have a perfectionist streak, but your point falls flat when you take into account the fact that they could literally afford to do that because WoW was making them money.

That's the point; reality kicks in hard in development; they have to get a product out in a certain timespan or else they run out of money. That's how the real world works. Blizzard can ignore that because one of their products has made them very wealthy and has given them the rare opportunity to take as long as they'd like to finish a game. Do you really think that if WoW flopped they would have canceled Ghost permamently and keep working on SC2 and Diablo 3 into the 2010s?

[Kia Purity]

Er, how is four years quick?

And to be fair, Valve doesn't exactly announce when a game's coming out until it's pretty much done. (I suspect they are working on HL3 currently due to the ongoing silence.)

Modifié par Kia Purity, 23 avril 2012 - 06:58 .

[brusher225]

I learned that video game story writers are not professionals. They're amateurs who happened to be getting paid. Some just happen to be good, some just happen to be not so good.

[Allan Schumacher]

Kia Purity wrote...

Er, how is four years quick?

And to be fair, Valve doesn't exactly announce when a game's coming out until it's pretty much done. (I suspect they are working on HL3 currently due to the ongoing silence.)

My guess is that they adopted this in response to how they handled Team Fortress 2 originally.

[Demodog35]

Deadlines in any business are an unfortunate reality. My personal belief is that ME3 should have been given a minimum of a 3 year development cycle because of the complex nature of the story and level of player agency in the game.

This whole situation reminds me of something that a regional VP for a company I used to work for told me years ago; "when you fail to plan, you plan to fail".

[Shaoken]

Kia Purity wrote...

Er, how is four years quick?

And to be fair, Valve doesn't exactly announce when a game's coming out until it's pretty much done. (I suspect they are working on HL3 currently due to the ongoing silence.)

I comparison to today's Blizzard? Four years is nothing, and that's four years with other Blizzard products coming out in the meantime, and at a point in time where video games weren't as expensive to make as they are today.

[TookYoCookies]

Shaoken wrote...

TookYoCookies wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That Video Games shouldn't have time constraints put on them.

That's an ideal, but I'm curious how you would reconcile it with the demands of reality.

 

Diablo 1-3

Warcraft 1-3

Starcraft 1-2.

WoW (flames inc; still a great game; hard to argue when you have 10 million people that pay to play it..)

basically every Blizzard game ever made post viking quest or whatever it was called...  

All of those games above won Game of the year awards(other than Warcraft: orcs and humans as far as i know), despite suffering from the Blizzard slogan of: "Sorry to inform you guys, but the release of *insert future GoTY here* has been delayed due to the devs wanting to further polish the product.". When purchasing and playing the games it shows. 

Good Games ---> Commerical succes.


is much better than:  


Average Game --> Market the sh*t out of it --> short term success --> Add DLC to make up for lack of longterm playability--> More Marketing.

I wonder what they smoke at blizzard to reconcile with the constraints of reality... Hmm....

*shakes head*

Allan brought up the list of Blizzard games and their release dates, and they were pretty much pumping out games every year before WoW was released, with expansion packs the year after. Hence why Diablo 2 came out not that long after 1, but 3 came out over a decade later.

So Blizzard smokes the metric ****-tons of money they make off WoW because it gives them so much money they can literally afford to take their time with games while other developers have to rely on releasing games at reguar intervals to keep a steady cash-flow.

 

Warcraft 3 came out 6 years after tides of darkness: pre WoW.  Diablo 2 came out 4 years after diablo, pre WoW. Expansion packs didnt take that long to make because they all ran on the same engines of the original games, saying that because they didnt take long to release them isnt a negative, obviously; because they were great expansions. Doesnt change the fact that the average time between full game releases was 3-5 years, (based off wiki research) with the exception of starcraft because it ran on the WC2 engine, also before the release of WoW, and every full game before and since has been good, and avoided narative destruction like ME3 hath brought. 

They didnt need WoW to have the time to make great games, they made great games, made money, and have continued to make great games unimpeded by time constraints. Never having to deal with a lack of budget, given that (as their work shows) if you make a great game regardless of dev. time, people will buy it/play it/love it in that order. 

WoW is proof of that, given it was in production 2 years before Warcraft 3 relased (4-5 years total) and convinced 10 milion people to pay $12 a month to play it. Now that they have WoW shouldnt mean that its a drawback against Blizz like it was somekind of fluke, or scapegoat for other companies to point at using "yeah, but.." scenarios, but more that game companies should look at blizzard and see how they got to where they are.. 

Like i said:  Make GOOD GAMES ----> MAKE MONEY.

things not to do: Spend $30 million dollars marketing a game, that will not live up to the depth you attmept to potray it has. 

Quality of Game > Marketing of Game. 

If Bioware/EA operated with said montra we would not be having this discussion. 

*shakes head*

[Precious Roy]

Shaoken wrote...

The issue seems to be that people are pointing at Blizzard and saying that Bioware should be like them, while ignoring the fact that Blizzard only got to be that because WoW has given them enough money to coast along for years without releasing new games, something that no other company besides Valve can afford to do.

Yes Blizzard cancelled Ghost, but they put it down for good after WoW was well off the ground and making them money. They canceled and restarted it several times sure and that shows they have a perfectionist streak, but your point falls flat when you take into account the fact that they could literally afford to do that because WoW was making them money.

That's the point; reality kicks in hard in development; they have to get a product out in a certain timespan or else they run out of money. That's how the real world works. Blizzard can ignore that because one of their products has made them very wealthy and has given them the rare opportunity to take as long as they'd like to finish a game. Do you really think that if WoW flopped they would have canceled Ghost permamently and keep working on SC2 and Diablo 3 into the 2010s?

The reality of developing a mainstream AAA title is well understood; the cost is enormous and difficult to recoup if it fails. I wouldn't care to speculate about what Bliizard would be without WoW, because there is simply no way to know. My point was that BioWare used to have a degree of customer trust and loyalty similar to Blizzard's. They got it in a similar way, by making high quality games that people cared about. Whatever the root causes, it is clear that BioWare is no longer capable of making the same quality of game that they have in the past. Blizzard and Valve are (rightly) cited as models of how to be successful without adhering to the EA mantra of exploiting lucrative IPs as ruthelessly as possible, regardless of how detrimental it might be to their quality. The argument that "real world" demands on development cycles cannot be circumvented is provably false, and the market is beginning to reflect that.

Clearly BioWare cannot simply extricate themselves from EA and fly away to a mountain to develop and then release their games at their own pace. EA is too large and too top-heavy to ever embrace the sort of ethic that drives small and independent publishers, and they do not have the revenue stream that WoW and Steam guarantees. BioWare must find a way to create quality games within the restrictions EA places on them, or suffer a slow death as they relinquish more and more control over their destiny, and their fan base grows ever more disillusioned.

[spychi]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I'd start by asking developers like Valve how they do it.

Tell that to Blizzard Entertainment.

Blizzard and Valve have significant persistent revenues in the form of World of Warcraft and Steam. (and my best guess is that Steam makes is much, much more than what World of Warcraft makes too)

Thats true, but the thing with shi t zzard is that they are greedy and make greedy decisions on top of that the only game they released thus far is Starcraft2 and as a fan of the Vanilla and Brood War I must say that Sc2 is the worst thing that ever happened to the video game industry . The story is **** and the game is rushed in terms of single player and multiplayer, overpriced piece of **** was supposed to be expensive so that the other expansions wouldn't but here we are and the prices  are not going to be lower.
Blizzard failed just like they will fail with diablo3.
Valve on the other hand is a respectful company that makes innovations and pushes the evolution of gaming properly.

[TookYoCookies]

Precious Roy wrote...



The reality of developing a mainstream AAA title is well understood; the cost is enormous and difficult to recoup if it fails. I wouldn't care to speculate about what Bliizard would be without WoW, because there is simply no way to know. My point was that BioWare used to have a degree of customer trust and loyalty similar to Blizzard's. They got it in a similar way, by making high quality games that people cared about. Whatever the root causes, it is clear that BioWare is no longer capable of making the same quality of game that they have in the past. Blizzard and Valve are (rightly) cited as models of how to be successful without adhering to the EA mantra of exploiting lucrative IPs as ruthelessly as possible, regardless of how detrimental it might be to their quality. The argument that "real world" demands on development cycles cannot be circumvented is provably false, and the market is beginning to reflect that.

Clearly BioWare cannot simply extricate themselves from EA and fly away to a mountain to develop and then release their games at their own pace. EA is too large and too top-heavy to ever embrace the sort of ethic that drives small and independent publishers, and they do not have the revenue stream that WoW and Steam guarantees. BioWare must find a way to create quality games within the restrictions EA places on them, or suffer a slow death as they relinquish more and more control over their destiny, and their fan base grows ever more disillusioned.

 


Well Said sir.

[Marty McMort]

It taught me how many banners can fit on one profile.

[Shaoken]

spychi wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I'd start by asking developers like Valve how they do it.

Tell that to Blizzard Entertainment.

Blizzard and Valve have significant persistent revenues in the form of World of Warcraft and Steam. (and my best guess is that Steam makes is much, much more than what World of Warcraft makes too)

Thats true, but the thing with shi t zzard is that they are greedy and make greedy decisions on top of that the only game they released thus far is Starcraft2 and as a fan of the Vanilla and Brood War I must say that Sc2 is the worst thing that ever happened to the video game industry . The story is **** and the game is rushed in terms of single player and multiplayer, overpriced piece of **** was supposed to be expensive so that the other expansions wouldn't but here we are and the prices  are not going to be lower.
Blizzard failed just like they will fail with diablo3.
Valve on the other hand is a respectful company that makes innovations and pushes the evolution of gaming properly.

And with that I can write your opinion off as being the minority. Wings of Liberty was brilliant, worth the wait, and Diablo 3 will be the same. What proof is there that Blizzard is greedy? They're no different than any other company, they don't exploit their fanbase, they've provided plenty of free updates for WoW, they listen to their fanbase, and they make great games. Yet somehow SC2, which was a well recieved game, is the worst thing tohappen to the industry. Worse than the yearly CoD/Guitar Hero rehashes by Activision. Worse than movie-tie in games. Worse than Capcom re-releasing a game nth amount of times. Worse than online passes and Day one DLC.

Also the expansions for SC2 haven't been priced yet, the base game wasn't any more expensive than any other PC game, so your own post fails to fact-check.