19 réponses à ce sujet

[jstme]

 TL:DR in title.

First, i am really really really really happy that DA:I got another year in development. And that it will be available for all the consoles. And that it will be much more open worldish then that Kirkwall jail. And the trailer was a good one. Varric looks better then in that other game that never happened anyway. 
I felt so much a happy camper that i actually considered to preorder despite my previous claims.

But something started to nag me - there is no actual gameplay shown and the game was supposed to be released in a few months. Surely ,most of the "old" DA3 content should be done by now,with dozens of hours of actual gameplay finished and ready to be shown.
The delay, according to all the info, is to increase the scope of the game. Larger areas ,more quests and stuff like that. Add awesomness to existing content.
And yet,despite all marketing logic , despite all the mentioning of cool new engine - all we are shown are nice cinematics and no actual game meat. Maybe i am missing something, but the only reasons for this that i can find are wearing tin foil hats.
Please tell me i am missing something. Pretty please? 

[Allan Schumacher]

It is all EA. Same marketing people. All those games (except Mirror with unknown date) will be released in 2014. All are first trailers. he only game that was actually supposed to be released in 2013 shows less actual game stuff then the others.
Sure, nothing confusing with that.

Eh, it hasn't "supposed to be released" this year, for us, for a little while now. There's complications as being a part of a publicly traded company to announce changes in release dates. If I make an off the cuff remark about the release date being moved back on BSN, there's actually a degree of personal risk I take because organizations are very careful about making sure information is appropriately disseminated in a fair and proper channel. So it's not like we woke up on June 1st and went "sweet, date pushed back!"

We could have shown some gameplay, but it's undoubtedly going to continue to change, but at this point it's also marketing. The teaser is just a teaser as the start of generating some buzz beyond places like BSN.

[Allan Schumacher]

I can guarantee that there was no sign of Darth Malak or Darth Revan in any of the SWTOR trailers. But I think this digresses somewhat from the point of this thread.

[Allan Schumacher]

ianvillan wrote...

You cant show gameplay in case it might change but why are you able to show a trailer that has features that might also change.

Is Morrigans, Varics and Cassandras 100% staying the same, if the answer is no why cant details about Gameplay features which a lot of fans have been asking for also be revealed.

Because people will be as pedantic as you're being right now.  Look what you're doing, you're skraking me over minutae.  The trailer's intent was to generate buzz and establish (both to ourselves as well as to the public) our visual target.

Face it, people are already going over frame by frame analysis of the trailer.  You're not being asked to buy the game today specifically.  With something simple and, in my opinion, less important such as Morrigan's lip synch.  It's also, quite frankly, easier to control.  Our game isn't done.  There's still a lot of unimplemented features, and even bugs.  Are you going to be happy if our gameplay demo shows a skill that ends up having some clipping through geometry?  Should we spend more time doing video capture of the perfect gameplay demo to avoid said bugs, rather than working on improving said features?

I expect significantly less changes to Morrigan and Varric than a lot of gameplay systems, which just found themselves with an extra year of development time and the ability to consider what levels of changes and polish can now be done that weren't as possible.  It's even possible we add things that were never intended to be a part of the game had it been released this year.

Bioware say that there previous marketing was not up to standard and that they are going to be more open and make sure that when they reveal anything it will not leave us with questions and that it will be a show don't tell. Yet the first thing you release if a flashy trailer which is just like the way DA2 was marketed.

Plans change? E xhibit A: release date.  Further, we did show, not tell.  We showed our visual target.  Now if your imagination told you you were promised something different, then take that as feedback and adjust your expectations.  If we were planning on releasing this year still, there's greater impetus on us showing more.

Or would you rather we show everything about the game today, leaving us, well, nothing except iterative improvements and hope that the excitement stays at a high for the next 15-18 months?

In any case, noted.  I'll advise that we delay releasing more information sooner rather than later.

[Allan Schumacher]

yes their was... Revan was 'revealed' at PAX east in 2010.

Which was over a year before launch.

It was a teaser in that it wasn't a walking talking ass kicking Revan (And oh boy had he been filled with suck when he did finally turn up in game) but HK-47 was their in glorious technicolour, as was Revan's base, and a flat out stated rebirth for Revan.

You're right, my bad. Although, pedantic again.... I suppose the opportunity to illustrate that I was wrong. I apologize, I was referring to the Blur trailers, since that's the context that the other person was talking about (specifically the Deception trailer), but I can understand that your need to correct me overstates the (directly quoted) hint that this discussion about SWTOR should stop. Noted, however, that I should be more diligent in the things that I say.

I guess saying DA3 is coming soon to distract people because the doctors were leaving was just meant for the BSN to get buzzed. Even though every major online gaming review company posted an article about a new DA3 game.

Speaking of being pedantic.... I'm taking a break after this.

No, announcing DA3 back in the time was not just to get the BSN buzzed, it was done because the Doctor's were retiring and people were going to have a lot of questions and concerns about the state of BioWare studios as an entity.  Part of the initial announcement was to soften the blow of this transition.

Since then (because that happened in September last year), I'm of the opinion that the majority of the discussion about the game (which until now had shown only the odd concept art) occurs on the BSN. If you think that the game has remained prominent in the discussion of gaming topics throughout other areas of the internet, then I guess we disagree on that point. It certainly validates a snide, immature, passive aggressive response though.  Did you feel slighted that I felt that the BSN was where most discussion of the game had been occurring?

So now I feel angry and annoyed, which I think may have been the intent of some people. Possibly because I annoyed people by stating that the BSN is where discussion occurs. Thanks.


The way people behave in this very thread is why, at this time, we didn't show very much. On the one hand it's interesting that people are so intense about analyzing things to the extent that they do. On the other hand, in my opinion it serves as a reinforcement point that we shouldn't release any footage until it's 100% ready for primetime.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 12 juin 2013 - 07:48 .

[John Epler]

Here's the thing.

It's easy, as a fan, to say 'oh, just show us feature X! That's all we want to see.' And sure, for you, that's fine. Except, unless the features that are complementary to feature X are also ready to show (and, sorry, but I've been around long enough to know that while there are some people who are perfectly happy to see unfinished features and understand that everything isn't set in stone, the most vocal of people will see an unfinished feature and assume the absolute worst), it's very easy to get the wrong impression. And you only have one chance to make a first impression re: a feature.

So for a lot of gameplay related features, we don't want to show until we're also ready to show the context of that system and the complementary features that make it work within the greater context. Some features are going to be burnt to the ground and rebuilt completely. Sometimes, they may just be burnt to the ground and not brought back in - and that's another thing. If I show you something awesome with some caveats, and it turns out at some point that 'oh, crap, we can't actually build this to work with our other major features', then we'll have shown you something REALLY NEAT that isn't actually in the final game.

Showing the general thrust of the story and some neat visuals is relatively safe at this phase of development. Showing you major features and systems is a lot less so - and yeah, I understand it's a little frustrating because folks want to see more of the game. We'd love to show it to you, but we'd also like to show you stuff that has a high likelihood of making it into the game. That's not to say we're ignoring what folks on the forums are saying - far from it. Fan feedback both here and elsewhere have certainly factored in to a lot of the decisions we've made, and we have a lot of advocates for the player that are working on this game. But when we show a feature and people ask 'yes, but what about...', we want to be in a place where we can answer those questions.

[Allan Schumacher]

First off, apologies for acting all pissy, as I kind of felt a hit from multiple directions, and I'm the type of person that finds a lot of the frustration for a teaser trailer (that in my opinion does show, albeit brief, rather than tell) that also mentions that the game is probably more than 15 months away, that there'd be some level of understanding on why something like this was shown, and may have "broken promises" regarding how much we'd reveal when we revealed.

Yes it's a teaser, because in part, at least speaking for myself, I wanted to show some people some stuff.  I am of the opinion that people were somewhat chomping at the bit, and the goal of creating a vertical slice of assets that in many ways would be acceptable if they shipped that way is good at focusing the team in that aspect as a full level shakedown for what it takes to deliver on those aspects.

It was a nice presentation of the new graphics, with glimpses of recurring characters and hints of the coming story. It was a good teaser, but ultimately didn't show me anything I was really interested in and didn't fit the idea of a "we show you DA:I" reveal I'd got from what I'd heard prior. Of course anything they could have shown us gameplay wise would have been something of a snap-shot that far from release, but it would likely at least have given us a feeling about how things like combat are approached in this installment.

"Be grateful we got something" is an opinion I'd probably agree with if I was already convinced about DA:I and just craved to see anything about it. But right now I still need to determine wether I'm going to be won over again by this installment of the franchise or not, and the teaser, although not bad for what it was, didn't shed anywhere near enough light on the (for me) crucial aspects of the game.

I can understand that for some people, such as yourself, a teaser like this probably doesn't mean much.  For myself, I take trailers that don't appeal to me for other games as functionally equivalent as no trailer existing.  I look at it more with apathy, rather than antipathy, which was a vibe I was getting.  It wasn't just "eh, this isn't what I was looking for," but rather an idea that somehow it's just another situation of BioWare not being honest with fans, betrayal, and a source of frustration for people whom, perhaps unfairly, I ascribed my own set of values on other people and held them to that standard.

Yes, we ended up not going "all out bonanza."  Mostly because of the release change.  We needed to share that the release date was shifting, and wanted to give a sneak peek at some stuff as a teaser.  For myself, when I see a lot of the frustration, I find myself getting the impression that people are very upset mostly for the idea that the reveal wasn't along the guidelines of what we had originally intended for our reveal, as opposed to the idea that a trailer 15-18 months out doesn't have any real gameplay in it.

I've seen some people state they can't understand why we bothered to share the trailer if we weren't ready for more, which seems to illustrate that they fail to recognize that there are people that wanted to get this sneak peak, and only really found themselves disappointed when they saw "Fall 2014" because they were getting super excited up until that point.  It's also part of a longer term marketing plan, something we're afforded to do with the time extension.  We certainly could not have done this at E3 last year.


As for stuff like gameplay, it's stuff that's important.  A lot of the gameplay at this point isn't something that I'd be comfortable showing either, because it's not done, and there are other aspects of gameplay that needs shaping up.  With the delay, it indeed excites me because I am looking forward to using that time to continue iterating on stuff that would have had to been in the game regardless of our ship date, rather than release a subpar product.

Game development has challenges.  By pushing the date back, first and foremost it gives us time to make sure the stuff we wanted for Fall 2013 can be better for Fall 2014.  It also gives us the opportunity to examine things that were not really considered/cut early because of scope issues, and all sorts of things.  The possibility of adding more (either tech or content) is now on the table.

If we could have shown balls out combat and gameplay two days ago, we probably would have.  But it's not there yet.  I think in this case, if it's not ready for prime time unveiling in May 2013, pushing out of a Fall/Winter 2013 release window is something I figured more people would be in favour of.  I think that showing a lot of gameplay now would not have been a good thing.  People can look at me saying this and go "Aha, even when they were saying they were still slated for 2013, they were never going to make it.  Liars!"  Or, they can choose to look at it and go "If it's not ready yet, it's probably a good idea to delay it."


The decision to delay isn't something that happened on June 9th either.  I've known for a while, and others knew before me.  There's a whole mess of stuff that I don't even fully understand, that I learned prior to DAO's release when it had a small delay and I asked "why don't we just state this somewhere?"  And it's not for marketing reasons.  Since I don't fully know all of the details, I'll mostly leave it at that since I don't want to misrepresent anything.  (Though as a developer, it was interesting watching release date discussion, even though I knew the answer)  If you notice, a lot of the commentary mostly continued to tow the official line, and even some of the more obvious hints that a delay was possible that were mentioned went well beyond what I was confident sharing.


Could we have shown nothing?  I suppose.  For those that loved what they saw, I don't think they would have preferred that.  For those that wanted to show more gameplay, you obviously didn't get that.  But do you actually have less than what you would have gotten had we shown nothing?  I can't convince myself otherwise.  So it seems like the prime issue is more the idea that there's some posts and comments that indicate that when we show anything of the game, we'll show stuff en masse.

So is the issue that you were disappointed/frustrated/irritated/whatever-word-you-want-to-use-here because once you saw it was DAI, you braced yourself for information overload that would include things you didn't care about and didn't get it?  If you're someone who feels that we should have just done nothing, is it genuinely because you think doing this reveal undermines the product, or is it because on a personal level, if we hadn't shown it you wouldn't have been faced with the disappointment of realizing it was just a teaser and didn't deliver on your hopes?  Yes, we didn't show gameplay.  Does it make more sense with the game still 15-18 months away (think of this in terms of DA2's development time....)?


I liked creating the trailer, and as a gamer and fan that talks on these message boards, knowing that we were getting Claudia Black to narrate, and were doing to show off Morrigan (a huge fan favourite) as well as Varric (also a fan favourite), with a badass Qunari, spliced in with some shots that show the level of fidelity that Frostbite will be able to deliver on top of some early sneak peaks at what some of the levels will look like and brief glimpse to the potential size that these levels may have, was all stuff that had me excited.  In my mind, we were showing (not telling) some brief snippets to build up some buzz, while announcing our release shift.  I was eager to see how people would react, and pretty much had to work late on Monday because I pissed away half the day clicking refresh on the various threads here as well as other places on the web.


As for pushing back release.  Yes, it means stuff wasn't ready for a 2013 release.  Speed bumps happen along the way, and when faced with the prospect of cutting scope and features in order to make our release, we ended up going with an extension of pretty much one full year.

So yes, just a brief snippet for now.  Because a lot of stuff isn't ready to show, which is why it's good to have a lot more time.  Some gameplay stuff as it stands makes me go "Yeah, I like this."  Some stuff goes "Hmmm, I can see the potential but I don't think it's there yet."  And yes, some stuff makes me go "Hmmm, this probably isn't working.  We should probably reevaluate.  Maybe even drop this feature for something else."  I am not at all confident that showing gameplay that makes me (a developer that will have an unfortunate bias for seeing a feature for what it was potentially slated to be - a fact that burned me on DA2) vary from "Yes this is great" all the way down to "This isn't working at all" would have been particularly well received.

So yeah, stuff like the faces and whatnot may change, so if you want you can say "Allan, you're not being honest when you say that gameplay stuff will change, because it's not like other stuff won't change too."  But if we were showing stuff that frankly didn't look that great, or that we're still experimenting with and ultimately may get cut and never show up at all in gameplay at release, that's bad.  Morrigan and Varric may see iterations on their looks, but it's not like Morrigan and Varric are going to be cut from the game.  The changes that happen to them will pretty much be pure polish, because there was an E3 team that sought to push those assets to a releasable quality.  Am I just being optimistic, or (aesthetic reservations aside for a beloved character that may look different in ways you find unappealing) would people be satisfied with a game that looked pretty darn close to what you saw in the trailer, with a bit of polish on other features.


Anyways, acting like a pissy individual isn't something I should do, and frankly I should have said "taking a break" before I wrote up my last few replies and PMs, but c'est la vie.  Some of the remarks came from individuals that I wasn't expecting it from, which ultimately led to a stronger emotional reaction from myself.  Though I'm the one that has to live with that.

Cheers.

Allan

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 13 juin 2013 - 07:20 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Deus Shepard wrote...

This is my first post on the BSN and if you want to see how people not from BSN reacted to the trailer; watch Gamer's reaction. http://www.youtube.c...?v=RyEIVY43PCk.

The trailer was fantastic and it teased a little of the story. Character models look beautiful. Although Varric look skinnier, and younger. Morrigan was perfect and cassandra looks like a true warrior.

The release date don't bother me. The more time you have, the better game we get. Thanks for taking your time to talk with the fans and i wish Bioware makes the best Dragon Age game ever.

Thanks a ton for sharing that link (and your impressions)!

To be fair, I think some from the BSN still reacted the same way.


Cheers.

[David Gaider]

IanPolaris wrote...
A year is a pretty extreme amount to be off by.  Even the most pessimistic estimates here on BSN prior was late spring of 2014.  If you can't figure out why a number of people feel misled (at best) then you have no clue regarding human nature.

I still think this managing of expectations was very poorly handled.

I think this is a good example of why most game companies are hesitant to mention any dates-- because no matter how vague those dates are, how much it's cautioned that such dates are preliminary, or how often games in general have their dates pushed back for any variety of reasons, there are always fans who will treat those dates as ironclad promises and any changing of them as betrayal.

The fact that the date slipped more than some here estimated doesn't mean the original date was any more of a promise than previously. As a word of advice (based on every project I've worked on having slipped its public date at least once), we are always "on track" for release until we're not. Count on it.

[David Gaider]

Zeldrik1389 wrote...
Personally, yes, I'm disappointed because I love DA series, and want to play more as soon as possible.

Yep. Disappointment is a perfectly reasonable response-- I'd feel bummed too, if a game I was really looking forward to got bumped out a year. There would be at least ten whole seconds of garment rending before I sighed and moved on with my morning.

But I understand how difficult it is for them to make it, and make it right. So as long as the final product is good, I don't mind waiting. Just hope that the dev team will give us more details soon, you know, just so we have better ideas about what we're waiting for.

I hope so, too. We don't disappoint fans gladly, that's for sure. The only reason we'd do it is because we believed the pain would make you guys happier in the long run. (And I'll try not to think of the sadomasochistic element of our relationship implied by that statement.)

[David Gaider]

Filament wrote...
They reaffirmed it because people asked, and that was the official word until they were allowed to comment otherwise.

Exactly. As a publicly-traded company we are obligated to only give publicly available release dates. As I said earlier, until the public date changes we will always be "on track" for release. If that seems disingenuous, my advice would be to not ask for comments on release dates. There is only one answer we are permitted to provide.

[Allan Schumacher]

But I think one of the reasons some people feel lied to is because, as recently as a few weeks ago, the higher ups from Bioware were still pushing the targetted for a fall 2013 release date line. The picture that Allan and others have painted so far makes it seem that a fall 2013 release date has completely been out of the question for some time now so persumably they've been repeatedly pushing the fall 2013 target date knowing full well the game wouldn't be out for a long time after that.

Part of it is because the specifics of the delay (specifically how long. When discussing pushing the date back, Fall 2014 wasn't the only time frame provided).

There's also issues with being a publicly traded company. I don't know what they all are (it's not really my concern), but I remember asking "Why don't we just tell people?" when DAO's release was being pushed back just a few months a couple weeks after I started, and basically the response was that there are restrictions and procedures that a publicly traded company has to adhere to.

So for DAO I towed the official line because I wasn't allowed to (in large part for my own protection). Once I knew of the release date shift for DAI, I tended to not chime in on the discussion outside of trying to break off arguments that people were having, and I tried to maintain more neutral terms, but that still poses a risk to myself.

Here's some problems with deciding to not answer: speculation. If someone keeps getting asked the question (and they had no issues answering), refusal to answer becomes an answer. Changing how you answer becomes an answer. By maintaining the line of currently publicly released information, it guarantees that I won't disclose non-publicly released knowledge and won't compromise myself or my employer (which extends to not compromising myself again). And for any that want to go digging through my posts, you'd probably successfully find situations where I fail to strictly adhere to this. If you wish to call me out on this, just understand what this will likely mean in how I behave on the BSN.

https://en.wikipedia...SEC_regulations

This gives a very brief gist. Now, I knew a delay was coming, but I know that various windows were being discussed. In some cases, it definitely wasn't even guaranteed.

My prediction, is it's case of being VERY conservative to prevent any sort of violations which will result in any sort of prosecution or penalty. Which can suck for you, sure, but it's not a simple case of coming onto BSN and saying "delayed!" Or, by my limited understanding, even just issuing a press release (I suspect a press release from a publicly traded company gets thoroughly looked over and takes a non-trivial amount of time to prepare, but that's just me guessing)

If any sort of release window has been announced, expect that window to be repeated even if you suspect it's going to move. Which is sucky, and it's why I personally, as a gamer, try to always recognize that a game's release date may change even if I heard otherwise from a company representative just hours earlier.


I'd prefer to not field a ton of questions about the specifics of this, nor the scrutiny or any potential cracks in my explanation because I'm frankly just making an assessment on what I think, and wouldn't at all be surprised if there's a lot of stuff that I don't even know about, and certainly more that I don't understand.

The picture that Allan and others have painted so far makes it seem that a fall 2013 release date has completely been out of the question for some time now so persumably they've been repeatedly pushing the fall 2013 target date knowing full well the game wouldn't be out for a long time after that

Which is why it's sometimes safer for me to keep my mouth shut. At some point, if you're going to take the things that I otherwise didn't bother needing to say, but tried to explain because, on some level, I felt a bit of empathy for people that were frustrated, as extra ammunition to use against myself or BioWare, it puts me on edge. It reinforces the notion that I need to be extra careful about what I say (something I probably didn't even do in this very post).

To borrow from David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" commencement speech, we as people can choose how we react to information, by extrapolating plausible reasoning. In most of our interactions with people, we will never actually know the reasoning behind the circumstances. We have a tendency to, when feeling inconvenienced, to ascribe negative traits to that which we feel inconvenienced by. So that person that speeds past you at 140 km/h on the highway is just driving like an idiot. Or, he has a son in the back that splashed some toxins in his eye, and the only thought on the father's mind is to get his son to a place to treat it (I use this example because I was that son a few decades ago, screaming in agony because I splashed some bad substances into my eyes by mistake while on a camping trip in the mountains).

My point with this is to ask yourself a question. You have now learned that the decision to move the release date conflicts with some messaging that came, likely after we already knew the release date changed. Do you think that any of those answers were done intentionally as an aim to deceive. Are we just obstinate, laughing somewhere that someone may feel cheated because of this? What ideas can you come up with (good or bad), that would motivate the dishonesty you feel we portrayed. The decision to motivate yourself to believe negative/nefarious ones will undoubtedly be influenced by your established feelings, especially if they are already mistrust.

I agree with the notion that people have the choice to determine how, long term, they react to things by which they aren't privileged to know all the details (and we rarely are). And even when we are, I can still choose to let a traffic jam annoy me or not.


EDIT:

If you can't mention a change of release window then just don't say anything at all. Why reaffirm a false time frame at all?

I know I mentioned it in the big post, but to reiterate: failure to answer IS an answer.  Especially if you were okay answering earlier.  Even then, I still saw hints given out (at least one of which directed to you personally), that I personally wouldn't have been comfortable giving out.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 14 juin 2013 - 10:28 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Far better IMO to be fully positive during E3 when you are making your public presentations.

Given the things fans often say (They better give this game enough time), I'm not entirely convinced that "Fall 2014" is even unequivocally "bad news." Plenty of people said they liked seeing that, and even elaborated that it's because they appreciate the indication that EA is willing to give the project more time.

[Allan Schumacher]

BasilKarlo wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Far better IMO to be fully positive during E3 when you are making your public presentations.

Given the things fans often say (They better give this game enough time), I'm not entirely convinced that "Fall 2014" is even unequivocally "bad news." Plenty of people said they liked seeing that, and even elaborated that it's because they appreciate the indication that EA is willing to give the project more time.

The only reasoning behind the delay being a bad thing is that the wait is too long, meaning they can't wait to play your game. Criticism of the delay is a positive thing, really.

I agree that that's really the only negative.  As such, I'm not entirely convinced that it's necssarily bad news.  The people it's most likely to be bad news for are the ones that were already superbly geeked up for it.

[Allan Schumacher]

IanPolaris wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Given the things fans often say (They better give this game enough time), I'm not entirely convinced that "Fall 2014" is even unequivocally "bad news." Plenty of people said they liked seeing that, and even elaborated that it's because they appreciate the indication that EA is willing to give the project more time.

Allan, I think we both know that you are quibbling a bit here.  I think everyone agrees that a game should be given enough time to be done right, but I also think most reasonable people agree that a schedule slip is gernally not considered to be good news (and especially one of a full year).

What makes it bad news?  Consider this within the context that people have the assumption (regardless of whether or not that assumption is correct) that corporate EA has placed too aggressive of schedules on BioWare, as a studio.

I also (like I said elsewhere) am still not entirely convinced that this extra time is being done 'just to be sure it is done right' and for no other reasons, but I also know that you can not comment beyond that, nor do I really expect any.  The question was posed and you and other BW reps did answer.  Time will tell.

-Polaris

"Just to be sure it's done right" is an exceptionally vague term.  Just to be done right will likely entail some level of permutation of "Continuing to work on existing stuff, adding new stuff, cutting other stuff."  Do you think it entails something different?

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 14 juin 2013 - 10:43 .

[David Gaider]

spirosz wrote...
Again, there is a difference between we want and we will show. They wanted and believe that fans deserve more than a teaser, but until E3, I'm assuming all that could be shown is a teaser, until they are more comfortable with showcasing something that will give reassurance to fans.

That's how I see that wording and what was executed at E3.

Yep. Timeline changed. Plans changed. Full reveal still to come-- or, I should amend, that's my current assumption. Perhaps I should simply say nothing, lest someone quote me six months from now or something.

[Allan Schumacher]

I said that schedule slips aren't generally considered good news, and IMX anyway they aren't. That doesn't mean that it's always unmitigated bad news either, but when I manage a project one of my caution flags go up when I start to see schedule slippage (which mind you often happens...in fact schedule slippage usually happens in fact). That doesn't mean it's ideal.

If it usually happens, wouldn't that more just make it "news" rather than something qualitatively good or bad? I think the context would be different if this was the 2nd or 3rd time that the date gets pushed back.

[Allan Schumacher]

It just really irks me that people seem to feel the need to repeatedly imply that everyone who read those quotes before E3 and dared to believe to have a general idea about how Bioware meant to approach the reveal of their new game was somehow being completely unreasonable. I'm sorry, I didn't know about the internal changes of plans until they were made public. That's when I said "Huh, that wasn't what I expected". That's ****ing all.

I simply took those statements more seriously than not, until they were replaced/updated, and seemingly it was wrong/ridiculous to do so in the first place. Whatever. Hurm, for the sake of my blood pressure I'll better just leave this thread...

It's okay to have interpret those past comments to set that level of expectation for yourself. My mental imagery has you having that expectation, so once you saw DAI news, it was some level of "oh boy, here it comes!" And then not getting what you thought was coming is obviously a big let down.

I don't think you're being silly nor unreasonable for getting your hopes up, and you're right that it's not exactly productive to get slammed with "Why'd you get your hopes up so much?" repeatedly. It's a bit like when I would strike out on my baseball team, and 9 different people would tell me I screwed up by striking out.

You're right that you didn't know the changes to the plan. I have a feeling though, that even upon learning of the change, it didn't alleviate your disappointment. Am I correct?

It's fine to be disappointed upon first seeing it based on your expectation. It's less good if you're still finding yourself disappointed, and I say "less good" in that I mean "That's not what I, Allan Schumacher, want you to be feeling at the moment." Is this still the case? Or is any continued frustration more "Yes, I realize my expectations were high, and it's not exactly helping being told by dozens of people that my anticipation was in error, and feeling relatively attacked for it?"

[Allan Schumacher]

IanPolaris wrote...

How do we know that it isn't the second or third time already? From an outside PoV, we don't.  I also think that one year is a very large chunk of time for it to be considered a 'routine' slippage.  This is why (and I said this already) my first reaction is that something must have gone badly wrong somewhere.

How do you know some game you really liked doesn't also fit into this criteria of having multiple delays that you never hear about?  Do you think that Dragon Age Origins originally slated to have as much development time as it did?  Assuming it exceeded 2 or 3 delays (I don't actually know the answer to this question), would it have been better for you, as a gamer, to scrap the project?


You're right that you don't know if it is or is not the second or third time already.  All you have is the information that is given to you.  If you wish to conspiracy theorize, my suggestion to you would be to find a way to set yourself to zero expectations for the game.  (Given that I learned how to do this, I do feel that it's in almost everyone's power to learn how to do this).  You're already placing forward hypotheticals, and at this point, it seems to be a reinforcement of your impressions of the company.

Which is fine.  If you don't trust us, I'd only expect you to temper your expectations even just as a defense mechanism to prevent further disappointments.


If we now need to be held accountable to the things that you imagine might be the case, I do not feel we will ever satisfy you, and would honestly feel more inclined to simply accept the idea that "Our prerelease decisions will not make IanPolaris happy.  At best he likes the game when it's released, but lets focus on the people that we can reach during prerelease marketing."

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 15 juin 2013 - 05:02 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

(Given that I learned how to do this, I do feel that it's in almost everyone's power to learn how to do this).

Unfortunately, that you can do something is not evidence that other people can do that thing.

This has been thoroughly demonstrated to me time and time again on BSN.

Touche.