Bay 12 Games Forum

they are now issuing warnings and removing comments on their boards after spending the day corralling all threads into one. They are trying to do some damage control in classic EA function. This is honestly probably going to do some serious damage to the company. It's not about this event alone, but rather the culmination of extensive and repetitive poor management. I feel bad for the innocent loss of jobs.

That doesn't strike me as out of the ordinary.  Stanley Woo has been ending lines since the Dragon Age 2 debacle, and TOR has been known to be run in the style of North Korea. They removed the unsubscribe button and locked the threads where people posted workarounds, banning users for farming credits, banned users for entering zones at low levels, banned users for using the trade network (essentially the only time I've seen an MMO company trying to shut down an in-game player run economy), and banned users for posting a workaround for the infinite-death loop resulting from the disastrous 1.1 patch (the party line was that if your character is trapped in the infinite loop you should make an alt).

I'm not too concerned about the loss of jobs given that from what I've heard TOR is a shining example of why outsourcing doesn't work for game development.  Coordinating the teams made quality assurance nearly impossible, customer service not always able to communicate with the playerbase, added massive overhead costs in addition to the bloated marketing and voiceacting budgets, and made the game an overall incoherent experience.

It's truly mind-boggling how many things can be expressed via RCT2 screenshots.

How DO you fund a truly MMO-based game like this, if not by a monthly fee?  I mean, what on earth do you charge for?  Pay-to-win sucks, and "you only buy it once" is a great way to bring down the game's servers in a real hurry once new players stop signing up.

Let's be generous and say that an average player uses $0.50 per month in bandwidth and amortized CPU costs, and that advertising costs and pay for the devs are fairly minimal.  What kind of payment scheme can you use, which guarantees an average income of like $6.00 per player per year?

I don't think anyone is debating the use of subscriptions for MMOs.  All things considered, a reasonable subscription is probably the most honest form of payment available for that kind of service.

The problem is that in exchange for a subscription the player tends to expect a minimum level of support.  Minecraft's multiplayer is a buggy, unfinished product made playable through extensive modification.  If Notch running a central server for his game, he discards that crutch.  It's almost impossible to argue that Mojang has the level of finesse and quality assurance required to pull something like this off.

While I certainly find programs like Minecraft and Blockade Runner enjoyable, I think it would do them a disservice to refer to them in their current states as "games".  Perhaps the reaction would be less acerbic if they marketed themselves as building toys first and games second, as this seems to be the function at which they're most adept.  They realize something we've all thought about--the potential for the application of computers to products like LEGO, which have grown increasingly irrelevant as they focus more and more on gimmicks and IP tie-ins.  While programs like Terraria and Ace of Spades might be better games and we can rag on Notch all day for being pompous, unprofessional, and having a terrible fanbase, we can't deny that he made this program before we did, and that since then we haven't been able to produce a more complete "LEGO-sim" (for lack of a better word) than he has.  The only substantive criticism I can level at his development process is that he really should release the source code once he loses interest.  Unfortunately I think he is reluctant to open source as Minecraft is the cash-cow keeping the bloated money-sink that is Mojang afloat (he really needs to trim the fat by firing everyone who isn't a programmer).

This idea might be entertaining if he drops the MMO/subscription model as he is in no way competent enough to run one, but only time will tell.

Quote from: MetalSlimeHunt on April 05, 2012, 11:43:33 am

They represent the commercialization of the actual people who play games themselves.

They are also painfully boring and unoriginal, but that is neither here nor there.

What? You mean people other than developers/publishers/"journalists" making money of video games? In a game like minecraft where even the base game is a confusing mess for a new player I don't see how instructional videos are "The worst aspects of the video gaming community." Especially in the light of the recent ME3 drama and most major gaming journalists turning on their readers like rabid attack dogs, the whole Jennifer Helper hate mail campaign that recently occurred, the rampant homophobia/racism endemic in the gaming community, etc.

I mean, going by what you said, surely people who play in organised competitions or leagues are MUCH worse, because they're doing nothing but playing the game. Yogscast at least create content. Startcraft/Street fighter players literally just play the game. So how are Yogscast worse exactly?

Most of the hate directed at Hepler was over bad writing (note: there are two mistakes in the video--at 4:00 the image to which he shows is not M.I.T.H. but an unrelated book and at 4:37 he cites the "old white guys" quote which is often falsely attributed to Hepler).  It was EA, IGN, Kotaku, and other advertising sites that decided to smear any criticism as the product of homophobia and racism.  The majority of the gaming community is older, intelligent, and well-educated, but for some reason gaming media still belittles us at every turn, as the stranglehold on publications means that gaming is one of the few industries where you can repeatedly insult your audience without repercussions.

As for Yogscast, while I personally don't enjoy their work it's no excuse for the way Notch treated them.

Guys, you can stop bashing the monthly fee. That's for an optional persistent multiplayer universe. Single player will be a single payment for what will probably be an enjoyable sandbox.

We're aware of this.  We just think that given the inevitably glitchy and unfinished nature of the game it would be more suited to player-run servers akin to Minecraft than a Mojang-run central server.

Quote from: nenjin on March 26, 2012, 12:14:26 am

I'll have to wait and see what players say about it. One thing a game like Dominions 3 shines in is variety and options from variety. Sure, races can be a little too similar to each other at times, but they make up for it with special units, special spells and traits that encourage you to use Dominion in different ways.

But yeah. MoM offers a lot of replay that other TBS/4x games don't get close enough to, because the upper level benefits offered by races boil down to essentially the same things. And they're often lacking in flavor too, which is kind of the biggest sin to me. I'll play a race I don't even like in Dom 3 just to see what the back story is on their sacred units.

Plus it isn't like Dominions doesn't have its own faults.

I once heard someone describe Dominion 3's largest fault is that it tried to trick you into creating/purchasing uttarly useless units. Mind you a lot of these units that are useless are doing it just to show how useless they are.

Dominions is one of those "Boobytrap" strategy games where a lot of learning how to play is to ignore large swaths of the content only made to distract you.

I think the big problem with the balance of Dominions is that even veteran players only have personal theories on what units are valuable.  The long playing time means that it's difficult to become good at more than a few civilizations, and even then you only have experience with a few very specific match-ups.  Looking at strategy guides in the forums feels like reading Ph.D. dissertations in that each player generally has experience and theories on a specific build of a civilization that they adapted over a small sample of matches.  If very fast, heavily deterministic games with large playerbases like Street Fighter and Starcraft can have things that are sleeper OP, I shudder to think what balancing a game like Dominions is like.  It'd probably be difficult to make Dominions balance-able (within a timeframe that is reasonable to a human) without removing what most of what makes it fun.

I'd agree with Nenjin that the big difference between MoM and Dominions is the single player.  Even disregarding things like how the micro seriously hurts the addictiveness of Dominions when not played over a long period of time with other people, the city/dungeon/Myrror mechanics made for a much more rewarding single-player experience.  Also, Dominions doesn't have an awesome opening cutscene.

Quote from: Micro102 on March 25, 2012, 02:15:50 pm

I tired this. It just takes longer.

You could just not pick master level locks, since your warrior isn't able to. He's completely under your control. Your desire to limit your own control shouldn't be the reason others are limited in theirs.

Let us play the game how we want to, and you can play it how you want.

If that's the attitude that you're going to take, why have skill levels and perks in the first place?  Surely we can decide whether our characters use magic or one-handed and light or heavy armor, and having metrics of our character's skill just limits our own control.  I would argue that in this case the idea that any character build can open any lock in a game that prides itself on character customization would be considered the aberrant opinion (note that if you were really bothered by your barbarian being unable to pick locks, you could always use the console to boost your skill, meaning that the game could still cater to this if players really wanted to).  While it is certainly possible to make an RPG without character metrics, TES has prided itself since Daggerfall in allowing the player to customize their character in a way such that the gameplay reflects their roleplaying.

Quote from: Darkmere on March 24, 2012, 02:43:08 pm

Hey, that faith in the gamer community I had?

http://www.edge-online.com/news/mass-effect-pledgers-thought-they-were-paying-new-ending

Shattered. I guess I learned my lesson.

So, a few people too dumb to understand the concept of charity represent all of the people involved? It says right there in the article that 'some people' sent mail about that.

Agreed.  Given how hostile gaming media have been to critics of ME3 and the fact that no numbers or posts are cited in the edge article to indicate the magnitude I'm inclined to think that these are a minority used to strawman the majority, similar to how they also tried to marginalize critics by accusing them of homophobia and misogyny.  That said, even if I don't agree with Jerry and Mike's opinion on ME3, I strongly agree with them discouraging the use of their charity for blatant marketing purposes, as this can often be underhanded.

I don't really see the appeal in "Retake Mass Effect".  It seems wasteful, like a campaign to get George Lucas and M. Night Shyamalan to start making good movies.  They've got their heads so far up their asses that they don't see how gaping plot holes, trite characters, and general bad pacing and writing are flaws that they need to address (Bioware is further hampered by their lapdogs at IGN and Destructoid trying as hard as they can to stop the spread of word-of-mouth, unlike legitimate journalists like Erik Kain).  While EA is somewhat to blame and I can't really condemn the Bioware team for phoning it in given what always happens to EA's subsidiaries, I can still say that Bioware, in their hubris, brought this on themselves.  Their last major releases have been a mediocre game and two bad games, so they've already been given far more leeway than Westwood and Bullfrog.  At this point, the best thing that any consumer can do is acknowledge that it's a lost cause and the best option is to stop financially supporting their products and inform other consumers to do the same, so that the executives can put the studio out of its misery and the creators can move on.  What's the point of offering creative criticism to people who believe that the title of "artist" grants infallibility?

I never paid much attention to Kickstarter.  It could probably work for very rare, specific cases (aforementioned board games, reprints of popular works already distributed through electronic media, and projects by high profile individuals/teams who have a reputation that would be forever sullied by a failure to produce a quality product).  Whether it will be used for video game funding seems highly dependent on whether Schafer pulls through and satisfies his pledges.

I'm inclined to be distrustful of projects under $10,000, as if the creator doesn't trust the idea enough to fund it, why should I?

Oh god-i-don't-believe-in, you people made me read this whole thread. I nearly broke a rib laughing. The best bit by far was Thera. Its already been mentioned but "Thera is a computer game." followed by two minutes of silence. I almost ruptured myself. To think, less than 150 years ago you would have had to pay a shilling to gawk at the mentally ill.

The funniest part of that video is that the only major difference between that kid and ZUN is that ZUN never posted a few hours worth of coding and spriting (and that's being generous) on Kickstarter expecting $5000.

Well, that and a copious amount of alcohol.

I'm still puzzled by the request for $5000.  It's both too big and too small to be realistic.  It's way to much to expect for an amateur shmup/danmaku (everyone's first coding product) and way to little to provide living expenses for a one-man team for any reasonable amount of time.