Ex-Codemasters CMO about Operaiton Flashpoint

[daman3 19]

Hello,

we have all heard Bohemia Interactives great history of Operation Flashpoint but rarely

ever heard something of the other side responsible for developing this game - Codemasters.

In a rare move Bruce, ex employee of Codemasters, has speaken out his real feelings on his private

blog.

Excerpt:

To keep the company going we published a series of PC games: Prisoner of War, Insane, IGI2, Severence etc. But it was another one that was the saviour of the company: Operation Flashpoint. We had very little money for advertising so we worked like crazy at public relations and internet marketing. So it was immensely gratifying when we launched the game and it went to number one in nearly every country with a chart around the world. It is an utter travesty that this game was not developed into a gaming mega brand and that the space that it occupied in the market was given over to other publishers.

Link:

http://www.bruceongames.com/2012/04/14/a-history-of-the-uk-video-game-industry-through-my-eyes-part-3/#comments

As it looks given his high ex-position, also Codemasters might have wanted the relationship to continue, which

I find great.

Edited October 14, 2012 by DaMan3

[onlyrazor 11]

It was developed into a mega brand. Now known as Arma :p

Seriously, though, mentioning Codemasters on these forums is like... There's gotta be a fitting analogy for this. Lighting a match in a natural gas cave? Something flame related, preferably.

[mr burns 132]

Admitting that a more or less independent-niche-housemade game rescued a company which is (and already was) known across the globe (at that time even for good games!) is a nice move imho

[Gunter Severloh 4070]

Seriously, though, mentioning Codemasters on these forums is like

:j: FPDR

also Codemasters might have wanted the relationship to continue, which

I find great.

Find great? Their a bunch of F**k ups, they tried to build OFPDR which they seriously screwed themselves over on, seems to me they have no integrity

in their work or support for the games they make, working with them would only make BIS like them. BIS stands best alone and only with associated

companies they can trust who have a history of following through.

This is another thread we dont need, we talked about codemasters and their OFPDR game to death, why bring the dirt here again.

If you did a search on the forums here you'll find plenty of thread about CM, dont add to the clutter, we already know they are a failure.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?87936-Dragon-Rising-has-been-released&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?104134-CM-Operation-Flashpoint-3-announced-quot-Oops-they-re-doing-it-again-quot&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?125011-Codemasters-Shuts-Down-Guildford-Studio-Known-For-Operation-Flashpoint

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?120566-Codemasters-Hacked

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?23491-Codemasters%27-flashpoint-chat

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?17226-Codemasters-has-done-it-again

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?140269-Operation-Flashpoint-Dragon-Rising-Forum&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?132415-Codies-up-to-something-OFP-4&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?113286-Codies-F1-browser-game-announced&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?108225-Consolemasters-ruin-another-title-%28F1-2010%29&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?95791-Codemasters-Expands-For-Nice-New-Shooter&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85107-FP-DR-News-amp-Discussion&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?56513-Operation-Flashpoint-2-officially-announced&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?56803-Operation-Flashpoint-2&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?56556-OFP-2-by-codemasters&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?50663-Codemasters-still-working-on-OFP2&highlight=codemasters

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?38508-codemasters-18th-birthday&highlight=codemasters

[dmarkwick 261]

:j: FPDR

Find great? Their a bunch of F**k ups, they tried to build OFPDR which they seriously screwed themselves over on, seems to me they have no integrity

in their work or support for the games they make, working with them would only make BIS like them. BIS stands best alone and only with associated

companies they can trust who have a history of following through.

This is another thread we dont need, we talked about codemasters and their OFPDR game to death, why bring the dirt here again.

If you did a search on the forums here you'll find plenty of thread about CM, dont add to the clutter, we already know they are a failure.

To be fair it's you bringing DR to the discussion. This is about an ex-employee talking about his perspective at the time over OFP. As such it's an interesting insight. Not all employees are fuckwits :)

[Gunter Severloh 4070]

Sorry your right.

But I bought OFPDR in the past and was my mistake, the day I bought it was the same day I uninstalled it,

it really pissed me off as i couldn't get my money back then so any word of CM rather irritates me.

[W0lle 1052]

I think it's no problem to discuss the first post of this thread. But don't even consider for a second to talk about the sunken dragon or dead river. ;-)

[walker 0]

Hi all

The Key problem with Codemasters attitude to games development is made clear in this part of the publishers quoted text:

...It is an utter travesty that this game was not developed into a gaming mega brand and that the space that it occupied in the market was given over to other publishers...

My use of bold in quoted text

Like all games publishers they saw it as a name, hense the DRECH debacle.

The game was an engine to be developed not a label to be stuck on any old shit.

They whored the brand and turned it into street slut.

Codemaster used to be a game development company then they went down the publisher route and got taken over by Goldman Sachs and became a brand managment company and thus lost their way. Bean counters and bankers do not know how to do game development, they do not even know how economics work, as 2008 taught us. All they know is short term profits and bonuses, you have only to look at how bad the world is now to realise you never let the bankers take charge, Iceland is the only country to get it right, their economy is now booming.

Kind Regards walker

Edited October 15, 2012 by walker
grammar transposed word even

[NoRailgunner 0]

Codemasters were purchased by equity group Balderton Capital. Despite tinfoil hats they are still in business and still making + selling games. Who is evil - gamers who demand certain games/gameplay or game devs + publisher who only supply gamers? ;)

[walker 0]

Codemasters were purchased by equity group Balderton Capital. Despite tinfoil hats they are still in business and still making + selling games. Who is evil - gamers who demand certain games/gameplay or game devs + publisher who only supply gamers? ;)

Hi all

In reply to NoRailgunner, some companies are just used as vehicles, shells and fronts to hide who is doing what, but just follow the money trail and you can find stuff out:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/balderton-capital-buys-out-founders-of-codemasters-the-company-receives-100m-funding-from-goldman-sachs-58087507.html

Who pays the piper calls the tune.

Neat huh?

Always worth looking a little further NoRailgunner. ;)

Kind Regards walker

Edited October 15, 2012 by walker

[NoRailgunner 0]

Still Balderton Capital invested in and later purchased Codemasters. Facts are facts - no matter how hard you try to turn words so they fit into your mantra/world. Always worth keeping a cool and unbiased view....

[instagoat 133]

He has a point, though. The bohemia/codies split shot down OFP, not OF:DR. I think the problem is that Bohemia always lacked in the marketing departement: the best that´s happened were the forum based detective games (especially the one that led up to the Arma 3 reveal, for example.). Another problem was the, so far, average craftsmanship with Armed Assault, Arma 2, TOH (though it was better there) and now Carrier Command (with score averages below 7 both on Console and PC, which is not that decent of a score).

There is some real talent working around the Bohemia games, unfortunately there are places where it is lacking, though what exactly is lacking can´t really be told from an outsiders perspective.

Armed assault and Arma 2´s initial releases were slow and/or buggy, at least in the relatively high-profile release case of Arma 2 so buggy that they tarnished the reputation of the brand pretty badly. TOH was not the most stable game right at release, and its most important features weren´t working as intended (as the complaints by the irl helicopter simmer crowd on the forums testify to.). Patches fixed that eventually. Now Carrier Command is released, and while it runs extremely smooth, it has game design issues, some obvious shortcuts, AI problems and crashing/corruption issues again.

DayZ -may- be changing that, but since it will be running on an RV type engine, I suspect it will be wonky at release too, especially with the ambitious goals the devs have set themselves. Same goes for Arma 3: even with the features cut back, the stuff they want to have in there is -still- big enough a change to cause serious problems (these problems likely already exist, causing the delays we have persistently been seeing since summer.).

A lot of this is guessing, but I believe the leverage of a big-bodied publisher who has the capacities to not only sustain a large development team, but also Q/A, -as well as- MARKETING is not always a curse.

Massive entities such as Valve (who are still independent and will always stay independent, according to Gabe Newell) have the money to do all those things themselves. All games they released, from half life up to portal 2 have been clean running at release, and engaging to the crowds. Other crowdpleasers like COD which really go for the lowest common denominator on the other hand are so prohibitively expensive to develop that even massive studios need large (brand owning) publishers to get them up to the standard people expect.

Game development has become massively expensive, and the market is massively competetive.

-Without dedicated, well focused, memorable and engaging marketing, especially with the tarnished reputation, Arma 3 will not be the rocket I as a fan would like it to be.-

Maybe this is something the community could help take care of. Grassroots, guerillia type, unofficial marketing. I went off on a tangent here, sorry.

Food for thought.

[walker 0]

Still Balderton Capital invested in and later purchased Codemasters. Facts are facts - no matter how hard you try to turn words so they fit into your mantra/world. Always worth keeping a cool and unbiased view....

Hi all

In reply to the above quoted post by NoRailgunner.

...Facts are facts...

Yes I present facts, then you give us your opinion.

Always worth keeping a cool and unbiased view

Yes very true, and accusing people with a viewpoint you disagree with of wearing a tinfoil hat is where is this statement?

...Despite tinfoil hats...

If you looked into the history of Balderton Capital you find it is controled by Benchmark Capital. Such organistation have always been used as a taxi service for other corporations to hide, from their takeover targets, competitors, governments, regulators and random investors, what they are doing. Unfortunately for such coprporate vehicles, many now know this and so their days as an anonymous taxi service for others capital investments are numbered. In fact I believe there is new legislation going through the house to make it illegal. In reality though their days are numbered for other reasons: Too many people in the markets watching who their passengers are and where they tell them to drive.

Your understanding of how capital investment companies work, seems to lack this knowledge. Unless you want to inform us otherwise?

It is never the taxi driver who choses the destination it is always the pasenger who pays the fair and tells taxi driver where to go. Like I said in my previous post always follow the money trail.

Kind Regards walker

Edited October 16, 2012 by walker

[Flash Thunder 10]

Codemasters would've been better off by not cutting so many crucial features from OFP that's what killed it not the lack of marketing funds.

FPDR

[disorder 1]

From what I gathered OFP was the game done by Codemasters in the VBS engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBS1)

Codemasters kept the name, which was an established brand.

BI kept the engine obviously.

ARMA then had the updated engine.

The new OpFlash-DR had a new engine that was "poopy".

[Flash Thunder 10]

OFP became mainstreamed and was a console first game once Codemasters began production.

Dragon Rising was hyped like crazy and failed miserably to deliver on mainly every area of the game, many of the features promised in videos are totally left out.

Red River was one cut after the other depleting any confidence one might have with Codemasters redeeming OFP.

They didn't even support Red River or Dragon Rising....

[JdB 151]

From what I gathered OFP was the game done by Codemasters in the VBS engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBS1)

VBS1 is based on OFP:CWC by BIS, not the other way around. VBS2 uses the basis of the ArmA1 engine. With the OFP brand name bolted down they thought they could just make money off of the name alone indefinately. Other companies managed to do so with other "brands", not those incompetent baboons of Codemasters. Too bad for them that most original OFP fans saw through the scheme and those new to the game had plenty of better alternatives available by that time like CoD and BF. OFP had to save them once, and now that they needed it again they only had the empty promise of the OFP title left so that failed and it cost loads of people in their shooter-dedicated studio their employment. For RR they didn't even bother to allocate their usual marketing budget to hype the game.

Edited October 16, 2012 by JdB

[walker 0]

Hi all

The Real Virtuality Engine is what was used to create the original game that Codemasters then sold a version under license with the name of OFP. The military then saw the game and asked for VBS to be made using it.

Bohemia Interactive maintained control of game engine at all times. As JDB and I already pointed out Codemasters only ever owned a brand in the former of name, in other words they owned nothing.

Kind Regards walker

Edited October 16, 2012 by walker

[chortles 263]

VBS1 is based on OFP:CWC by BIS, not the other way around. VBS2 uses the basis of the ArmA1 engine. With the OFP brand name bolted down they thought they could just make money off of the name alone indefinately. Other companies managed to do so with other "brands", not those incompetent baboons of Codemasters. Too bad for them that most original OFP fans saw through the scheme and those new to the game had plenty of better alternatives available by that time like CoD and BF.

Ain't that funny... not only did they go completely "in the opposite direction from old-school OFP," but you just called CoD and BF better than DR. :p Then again, historically one of the key points for OFP/ARMA was its modding -- I'd dare suggest that the lack thereof for DR helped doom it, since without that, CoD had DR beat on "razzle dazzle infantry shooting" (let's not kid ourselves here) and BF had DR beat on "combined arms" (consoley yes, but "combined arms" all the same).

The bit about fans seeing through the scheme is actually really important though -- as problematic (and helping to form the reputation of ARMA's engine as so hilariously buggy that its name alone is a punchline*) as the original ARMA was, slapping "from the makers of the original Operation Flashpoint" on the box probably really helped with protecting BI's brand, so to speak -- implicitly, "Codemasters got the name, but we kept what you bought it for!" Likewise, when BI released a public statement regarding DR and Codemasters' marketing, the emphasis on "they've just got the name, we've got the gameplay".

I recall though that at the time of DR, Codemasters may have been counting on how disgruntled players were with ARMA 2's early issues -- as InstaGoat mentioned, "they tarnished the reputation of the brand pretty badly" -- by implicitly offering "ARMA hardcoreness without the ARMA bugs!" Problem was, it lacked the modding...

... ironically, it seems like ARMA 3 is aiming to even exceed and take the role that DR was supposed to be, "ARMA hardcoreness without the ARMA bugs!" :D Unfortunately, as InstaGoat also said, the delays since summer may be because of how much even seemingly lower-ambition changes are enough to cause bugs, because of how sprawling the ARMA concept is...

OFP had to save them once, and now that they needed it again they only had the empty promise of the OFP title left so that failed and it cost loads of people in their shooter-dedicated studio their employment. For RR they didn't even bother to allocate their usual marketing budget to hype the game.

For me what really doomed RR wasn't the gameplay change, but that time when Sion Lenton responded to unelaborated-on complaints about how it wasn't a sim... by telling complainers that ARMA existed and to go play that instead.

Seriously, I'll lay off on the devs insofar as they weren't ever going to even try to be a sim and RR shouldn't have been judged against ARMA, but when you look to how Jake Solomon of Firaxis (notorious as the XCOM: Enemy Unknown lead dev) treats Xenonauts and how Rocket treats WarZ, that's got to be a marketing 101 failure coming from the executive producer for RR.

* Ctrl+Alt+Del's (although of course mistakenly wondering if anyone already owned ARMA 2 before DayZ) got a pretty comprehensive example of how bad ARMA 2's reputation can be in this DayZ review, while being sold on the DayZ concept: "I feel like Day Z would be way ahead of the curve if it had been a mod built for another first-person shooter... let's say, oh I don't know... any of them."

---------- Post added at 11:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 PM ----------

Another problem was the, so far, average craftsmanship with Armed Assault, Arma 2, TOH (though it was better there) and now Carrier Command (with score averages below 7 both on Console and PC, which is not that decent of a score).

Pretty much -- as you elaborated on the next paragraph, lasting damage can be done to a brand with an initial release that looks bad, no matter what the devs' explanations are. Heck, I was one of those hyped for BRINK... a few months in its MP scene was already dead and now its name is a punchline/toxic.

DayZ -may- be changing that, but since it will be running on an RV type engine, I suspect it will be wonky at release too, especially with the ambitious goals the devs have set themselves. Same goes for Arma 3: even with the features cut back, the stuff they want to have in there is -still- big enough a change to cause serious problems (these problems likely already exist, causing the delays we have persistently been seeing since summer.).

I can tell you this, re: "RV type engine", that has become both a blessing and a curse for DayZ marketing-wise -- see the aforementioned Ctrl+Alt+Del comment, and how much of RV that Rocket outright throws to the wolves (i.e. the open nature of the engine) in talking up his desire for a standalone and why BI agreed, as well as talking up how the engine is going to be its own iteration custom-made for DayZ, that's how toxic the name "Arma 2 engine" can be.

I can tell you this though, when it comes to ARMA 3 the 2012 screenshots and video of infantry movement and small arms shooting (you know, the sort of thing that riled up certain people on these boards as "too fluid and responsive") was... let's just say that the leading-up-to-E3-and-to-Gamescom footage was greeted a LOT better by DayZ fans and casuals, i.e. "OMG imagine DayZ running on THIS engine!" How much difference a different engine iteration in the same year makes! :D And then the letdown when they found out that it still had anything to do with "the Arma 2 engine"...

Nevertheless, I consider the above as yet another example that ARMA's victory over "Operation Flashpoint Codemasters" (as TV Tropes calls it) is complete. :D

Edited October 16, 2012 by Chortles

[max power 21]

From what I gathered OFP was the game done by Codemasters in the VBS engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBS1)

Codemasters kept the name, which was an established brand.

BI kept the engine obviously.

ARMA then had the updated engine.

The new OpFlash-DR had a new engine that was "poopy".

BI developed what became Operation Flashpoint over many years. Codemasters signed on to publish, and currently owns the name of the brand and some of the voice acting performances, but not the engine or other IP. BI owned exclusive rights to develop a sequel, but not the name. AFAIK, this is why DR is called OFP: DR not OFP2, and why ArmA 2 is called ArmA 2 and not OFP 2 (ArmA 1 was more like an OFP: Elite 1.5). It's quite convoluted.

IIRC, VBS was created in response to a program called DARWARS Ambush! which made use of the OFP engine for simulating attacks on convoys but wasn't properly licensed by DARPA.

This is just what I recall about reading about the various situations as a community member and is not an official statement.

[NoRailgunner 0]

walker - who bought Codemasters? Who is the owner? Simple example: if you invest + purchase 'something' and someone is supporting this with his money - who had purchased this 'something'? Now go back to your first post and read it with more care and without bias - you see how fast you jump to conclusions? Another part of you statement:

Bean counters and bankers do not know how to do game development, they do not even know how economics work, as 2008 taught us. All they know is short term profits and bonuses, you have only to look at how bad the world is now to realise you never let the bankers take charge, Iceland is the only country to get it right, their economy is now booming.

Please proof that bean counters and bankers don't know how economics work!! Neat sensationalism again walker, huh?

[JdB 151]

Ain't that funny... not only did they go completely "in the opposite direction from old-school OFP," but you just called CoD and BF better than DR. :p

Because they are. DR and RR just had the name, but none of the gameplay that made OFP OFP. It was an arcade game in a military setting just like those two "brands", but both are far superiour in what they do offer.

No modding certainly was another big factor, but the baseline is that even if there had been modding tools, realism oriented modders would have gone for ArmA and action oriented modders for CoD and BF. DR tried to be a perfection of both types in one game and failed and RR couldn't even get close to being just a simple BF clone. DR was even more dissappointing for those who fell for the hype of all of the features that were promised but were missing at release. People complain about ArmA3 missing previously mentioned features, but at least BIS admits it before people spend their money.

[walker 0]

Hi all

When the bean counters and merchant bankers take over, functionality goes out the window, that is after all what happened with DRech debacle. The customer/gamer was prommised the moon and what they got was a cinder from a burnt out fire, based on an engine that was not ever up to the task. It then becomes fool the customer with the brand and take the money and run.

Much the same as the merchant bankers did to the world economy by selling mortgage backed securities based on housing and condominium developments to be sold to the super wealthy in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Florida for which there were no buyers, they became so deperate they started selling them to joe blogs on the street, who could not afford the mortgages that the merchant bankers were conning them into buying. The merchant bankers sold securities based on a brand just like what happened with DRech the result was the same. The customer got ripped off.

In Iceland the country realised it and arrested the bankers. In the games world Codemasters own brand started to suffer from contamination from the DRech debacle as customers became suspicious of other products made by the same company that released DRech.

You reap what you sow in the world of brands.

Game Development is whole different kettle of fish, something the Merchant bankers and Bean counter will never understand, mainly because they have never had the science education needed.

Kind Regards walker

[slatts 1978]

Hi all

When the bean counters and merchant bankers take over, functionality goes out the window, that is after all what happened with DRech debacle. The customer/gamer was prommised the moon and what they got was a cinder from a burnt out fire, based on an engine that was not ever up to the task. It then becomes fool the customer with the brand and take the money and run.

Much the same as the merchant bankers did to the world economy by selling mortgage backed securities based on housing and condominium developments to be sold to the super wealthy in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Florida for which there were no buyers, they became so deperate they started selling them to joe blogs on the street, who could not afford the mortgages that the merchant bankers were conning them into buying. The merchant bankers sold securities based on a brand just like what happened with DRech the result was the same. The customer got ripped off.

In Iceland the country realised it and arrested the bankers. In the games world Codemasters own brand started to suffer from contamination from the DRech debacle as customers became suspicious of other products made by the same company that released DRech.

You reap what you sow in the world of brands.

Game Development is whole different kettle of fish, something the Merchant bankers and Bean counter will never understand, mainly because they have never had the science education needed.

Kind Regards walker

I'm sorry, but are you seriously bringing into a topic about a former Codies bloke talking about OFP, the world housing market crash/ uber evil bankers?

So what if someone bought Codies and told them they want something done a certain way, that's business, and game development is a business. End of.

[walker 0]

Hi all

In Reply to Slatts post:

I am stating that the problems with the games market is when the Brand mentality of the Merchant Bankers and Bean Counters supercedes the vision of the developers. That is when the corners get cut to increase profit and the art and skill disapears.

The assumption of the Merchant Bankers and Bean Counters is that it is everything is down to money, the reality is that money is just a tool for development. When the money is in charge and the brand label decision becomes more important than the thoughts and ideas of the developer the only way is down the toilet.

Like a I say placing money above all else is a fundamentaly flawed concept that actualy results in loosing money. This applies across the board with all kinds of business. The mess the Merchant Bankers and Bean Counters made of the world economy is just another example.

Kind Regards walker