Why games are rubbish.

[dmarkwick 261]

I guess there are several threads this could have gone in - which is reason enough for it's own thread I think :)

http://kotaku.com/we-need-better-video-game-publishers-472880781

Perhaps a good reason for BIS to go with Steam? If Steam can keep its demands out of the business of development then maybe it was a good step to take.

[dm 9]

As I understand it, valve/steam have 0 input to any of the titles they publish, except those developed by valve.

Take Arma3, they "publish" it (by that I mean provide the hardware infrastructure to allow millions of people to download it), and for that they take a percentage of every sale made through steam.

They have no input in how the game should look or feel, they are not investing any money into BI.

I think that is how it is for 95% of the games on steam.

Steam and things like Kickstarter should be the death of the traditional publishing houses (and rightly so, their model is outdated and corrupt), so we should see more and more studios being capable of developing games as they see fit, without pesky ean-counters and market-focus groups interfering.

Whether or not that will lead to better games, we'll just have to wait and see...

[mrcash2009 0]

Looks like this will end up another steam thread and I said everything that one :)

Always remember that independent goes so far and playing safe by running to these funnelled routes under one umbrella is fine until it completely dominates, its still a business, it still has data that worth something, and people and owners and shareholder change over time. So current views under current financial climate look one way, but then theres the future and the complete reliance through this one avenue that's the only thing left without options.

You may get less dictated game content, but you certainly do get dictated rules to get them, so the shift is from the game content itself to the distribution source yet again.

Oh dear, I did say all this in the other thread ... :p

Edited April 16, 2013 by mrcash2009

[dmarkwick 261]

As I understand it, valve/steam have 0 input to any of the titles they publish, except those developed by valve.

Take Arma3, they "publish" it (by that I mean provide the hardware infrastructure to allow millions of people to download it), and for that they take a percentage of every sale made through steam.

They have no input in how the game should look or feel, they are not investing any money into BI.

I think that is how it is for 95% of the games on steam.

Steam and things like Kickstarter should be the death of the traditional publishing houses (and rightly so, their model is outdated and corrupt), so we should see more and more studios being capable of developing games as they see fit, without pesky ean-counters and market-focus groups interfering.

Whether or not that will lead to better games, we'll just have to wait and see...

...get back to work ;)

I guess the thing missing from the equation is development investments.... I mean, Steam don't actually invest in any (non-Valve) development do they? If you were a developer needing funds, I guess you might take a different route.

[dm 9]

...get back to work ;)

I guess the thing missing from the equation is development investments.... I mean, Steam don't actually invest in any (non-Valve) development do they? If you were a developer needing funds, I guess you might take a different route.

I think thats where things like kickstarter come in. Rather than having to go to some meddlesome investor, they can pre-sell their game direct to the customer, gathering the money needed to complete the project as they see fit, and then delivering.

I much prefer that system, as it means there is no "design by committee" that you see so often currently.

[NoRailgunner 0]

If developers/publishers underestimate the work and time required to release their game projects - it's their own problem. Talking about "unfortunate release" and "overambitious project" after release shows how bad the project management and internal workflow is or was. Basically the consumer (player) only want to have a great time with the product (game) he bought. Guess proper internal/external testing game projects before release is something some developers and publishers don't want to waste time with.... better hope on short memory of players or to sit bugs/issues out until its "too late to fix them" (because of new awesome-splendid game project!).

[mr burns 131]

Steam and things like Kickstarter should be the death of the traditional publishing houses (and rightly so, their model is outdated and corrupt), so we should see more and more studios being capable of developing games as they see fit, without pesky ean-counters and market-focus groups interfering.

Whether or not that will lead to better games, we'll just have to wait and see...

There´s at least one game from the near past which was traditionally published (Codemasters) and turned out to be great.

Personally i don´t understand how in the course of only 10 years a positive publisher-developer relationship that helped both sides could turn into what we´re seeing nowadays (everywhere).

There was always big money on the table, so that cannot be it. Maybe in the past publishers we´re led by a dying breed of people (the 80´s C64 pioneers)?

edit: read article, explains alot.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Mr Burns

[dmarkwick 261]

If developers/publishers underestimate the work and time required to release their game projects - it's their own problem. Talking about "unfortunate release" and "overambitious project" after release shows how bad the project management and internal workflow is or was. Basically the consumer (player) only want to have a great time with the product (game) he bought. Guess proper internal/external testing game projects before release is something some developers and publishers don't want to waste time with.... better hope on short memory of players or to sit bugs/issues out until its "too late to fix them" (because of new awesome-splendid game project!).

Hence the article. You just basically repeated the jist of it :)

[Tonci87 163]

Great article!

[max power 21]

But oh, don't you worry, product managers are making their way to indy, free to play model, and mobile development houses as well.

[Beagle 684]

I think thats where things like kickstarter come in. Rather than having to go to some meddlesome investor, they can pre-sell their game direct to the customer, gathering the money needed to complete the project as they see fit, and then delivering.

I much prefer that system, as it means there is no "design by committee" that you see so often currently.

More and more of that hyped kickstarter Projects fail too....just because something is on kickstarter or similar does not mean it's a success...often enough kickstarter etc. is just another way to burn your money.

here is the most prominet Kickstarter project that ate the money (8.500.000) but is still not able to deliver what it promised.

http://www.ouya.tv/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console

http://kotaku.com/5924983/history-is-littered-with-the-corpses-of-failed-consoles

Edited April 17, 2013 by Beagle

[Dwarden 1124]

it's not only successful console project on KS http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/872297630/gamestick-the-most-portable-tv-games-console-ever

imo both had way too big success and way too short promise deadline for hardware product ...

also I think Oyua is sort of hype type of project because the hardware is nothing special

(you can get the same performance in any recent new tablets and smartphones)

http://kotaku.com/the-ouya-is-the-78th-fastest-android-device-on-the-pl-474001439

the GameStick was at least way more successful try to reach very small form factor size

Edited April 17, 2013 by Dwarden

[Minutemen 10]

You know what i miss? Ghost Recon 1. That was time i loved and it showed a nice script when seven years after it was published a war between georgia and russia broke out about ossetia 2008 exactly like in Ghast Recon. Tom Clancy and his Pentagon sources... But you don't need insider sources when you wanna make up a good story. For example, i realy liked the Arma2 scenario but its potential wasn't used at all. Community added some good stuff.

But yeah, most games today are garbage(i hate it when people say rubbish when they mean garbage) and the finest example is the dead ridden Call of Duty series. What a waste of resources for a no-brainer. They started good with Call of Duty 4 but then it just when through some sort of "HEY WE NEED THAT SLOW MO EFFECT EVERY TIME" door breach in a room full of other bad ideas and they had a night of unprotected sex and meth and their children are now Call of duty Mondern warfare 2-3 and black ops. How coooool are black ops... As better the grafics get as dumber story and action gets. What the hell, what have i done to you game developers? Is my money not enough? Is this why i have to registrade every damn game now online with origin? Do you want my soul also to hand them over to your satanic overlord who sucks brains dry and loves to kill inovations and creativity together with medipacks in his dark bloodonthescreen torture dungeon.

The Fantasy market is also sucked dry and Witcher2 was the last silver lining concept in that genre.

You know what? Dungeon Keeper 2 and Ghost Recon. That was my time. Todays games suck and i don't care if the developers go bankrupt. And i some cases where i hope they make it, like with Company of heroes 2 and THQ, i blame the Nerds for having no clue of capitalism.

[maddogx 13]

(...) i hate it when people say rubbish when they mean garbage (...)

You know the almighty US of A isn't the only place where people speak english, right? For example, there's this little place across the Atlantic called Great Britain, where we use our own little english colloquialisms. Rubbish is just one of them.

More and more of that hyped kickstarter Projects fail too....just because somethign is on kickdstarter or similar does not mean its a success...

Very true. I'm still quite skeptical of the concept of crowd funding; not just because projects can fail, but because it can be (and has been) abused. There simply aren't any guarantees that you'll get what you paid for.

EDIT: That being said, I have taken the plunge and contributed to one project in the past (Chris Robert's Star Citizen / Squadron 42). At the end of the day it's all about taking a leap of faith.

Edited April 17, 2013 by MadDogX

[dmarkwick 261]

i hate it when people say rubbish when they mean garbage

But I didn't mean garbage, I meant rubbish :)

And, I presume you meant "I" and not "i" ;)

I haven't watched the vid you linked up, but I will (or at least will scan through it). I actually really liked Skyrim, but I did not like Oblivion. Previous to that, I absolutely adored Morrowind. I think Skyrim represents a middle-ground between the gameplay of MW and the environment of Oblivion. The thing that killed Elder Scrolls IMO was.... voice acting. Not the voice acting itself.... but the very inclusion of it. It removed so much gameplay flexibility and unnecessarily locked down the game to be not only storyline inflexible, but sandbox inflexible. You cannot ask someone directions because there's no recorded response, and a generated text response is of course not implemented because of the voice acted responses. This means that the way to find your destination - is to be pointed directly at it. No more finding places, you just follow the arrow. Then you do The Thing, then you follow the arrow again. Essentially you're playing a game with a built-in walkthrough.

[Tonci87 163]

But I didn't mean garbage, I meant rubbish :)

And, I presume you meant "I" and not "i" ;)

I haven't watched the vid you linked up, but I will (or at least will scan through it). I actually really liked Skyrim, but I did not like Oblivion. Previous to that, I absolutely adored Morrowind. I think Skyrim represents a middle-ground between the gameplay of MW and the environment of Oblivion. The thing that killed Elder Scrolls IMO was.... voice acting. Not the voice acting itself.... but the very inclusion of it. It removed so much gameplay flexibility and unnecessarily locked down the game to be not only storyline inflexible, but sandbox inflexible. You cannot ask someone directions because there's no recorded response, and a generated text response is of course not implemented because of the voice acted responses. This means that the way to find your destination - is to be pointed directly at it. No more finding places, you just follow the arrow. Then you do The Thing, then you follow the arrow again. Essentially you're playing a game with a built-in walkthrough.

Yes, that´s one of my biggest problems with this game. And you can´t really turn them off becuase then you have no chance to find the objective.

[PuFu 4591]

good article

[NoRailgunner 0]

One could also ask why so many people are buying games/series without much thinking or informing themselves about it? Are quicktime events and other film effects + sfx are more important than gameplay and proper interaction?? Are games becoming more and more just eyecandy without much depth and demanding less from the player?

[dmarkwick 261]

Yes, that´s one of my biggest problems with this game. And you can´t really turn them off becuase then you have no chance to find the objective.

Actually I do turn mine off. It makes me lose my way a lot, but I can always look at the map to get an idea of where I'm supposed to go (seeing as it's also spammed onto your map).

One thing I noticed when I disabled all HUD helpers is that I notice a lot more things. I might occasionally notice a small very faint path leading off the main road.... a detail that is there, but unneeded when your HUD is blurting all the local areas at you. Following these little clues always leads to somewhere interesting :)

---------- Post added at 12:18 ---------- Previous post was at 12:15 ----------

One could also ask why so many people are buying games/series without much thinking or informing themselves about it? Are quicktime events and other film effects + sfx are more important than gameplay and proper interaction?? Are games becoming more and more just eyecandy without much depth and demanding less from the player?

IMO it's because most game are bought by, or for, kids. Even when certificated otherwise. Like Disney films, every few years a new generation is coming into gaming for the first time and so the repetitive nature is a lost detail. Plus - people just do like the same thing over & over again. Look at films for example. How do you imagine that Van Damme or Steven Seagal can make the same film over & over again, and still get work? Sequels, another example. People want the same film, only more so. Games suffer a similar effect.

[metalcraze 290]

Kotaku should be the last place to publish that article, if they have any right to do that at all.

A place where so called "journalists" who have not a slightest idea about games and "gamers" who fall over any new overhyped POS that comes out every season complains that not everything is well with gaming? The irony and hypocrisy that stay through all Gawker websites.

Don't buy bad games, don't buy crappy DLCs and they won't be made. Simple as that.

I think thats where things like kickstarter come in. Rather than having to go to some meddlesome investor, they can pre-sell their game direct to the customer, gathering the money needed to complete the project as they see fit, and then delivering.

I much prefer that system, as it means there is no "design by committee" that you see so often currently.

Except the majority of kickstarter projects are either trying-too-hard hipster games or subpar rehashes/sequels of old games with very few games worthy of note because want it or not but publishers are only half of the problem.

Devs can be talentless too and who is the majority of the developers on kickstarter? It's either established studios with track records that are so bad that no publisher will want to do anything with them or indie devs with no experience. And what's worse - you give them money not for the real game like you do with real games, but for a promise that may or may not be the truth. And there's no way to get a refund since you are 'donating'.

See how Banner Saga devs turned one game into three (so you have to pay again and again) or Shadowrun devs lying about how their game will have no DRM option and now there is no option but DRM. And Banner Saga is barely any better than some Facebook game. Can't blame "evil publishers" now.

Edited April 23, 2013 by metalcraze

[bonchie 39]

I agree about Kickstarter.

Developers milking supporters for production costs before the game is even produced is a bad way to go about things.

One guy doing a space game (not going to name names) tried to do a kickstarter for like $250,000. He even admitted that $100,000 of that was his personal salary. Call me old fashioned, but if you stand to make all the reward then you need to take the risks and accrue the debt it takes to produce the product. Either that or get real investors. Not collect a salary off of kickstarter funds while others prop up your possible cash cow in the meantime.

I don't mind the model for payed alphas and betas (BI and DCS do this) because at that point the core of the product is developed and you know the end product is going to come.

Point is, I agree with the original article that publishers are killing good companies and franchises. But I also agree with metalcraze that there are a lot of bad developers out there abusing public goodwill through things like kickstarter. That's not the answer either.

I'm still waiting for any of the kickstarter projects publicized over at simhq.com to come to fruition.

Edited April 23, 2013 by bonchie

[NacroxNicke 11]

All this happened before... Do you remember ET? It was one of the games in a period where publishers made the industry colapse just as it will happen in a few years if they keep doing the same thing again and again...

[Insanatrix 0]

You know the almighty US of A isn't the only place where people speak english, right? For example, there's this little place across the Atlantic called Great Britain, where we use our own little english colloquialisms. Rubbish is just one of them.

Very true. I'm still quite skeptical of the concept of crowd funding; not just because projects can fail, but because it can be (and has been) abused. There simply aren't any guarantees that you'll get what you paid for.

EDIT: That being said, I have taken the plunge and contributed to one project in the past (Chris Robert's Star Citizen / Squadron 42). At the end of the day it's all about taking a leap of faith.

I'm fine with Kickstarter in the sense that it gives Indie developers a way to fund their projects.

Look at things like Mechwarrior Online or Path of Exile though where they were crowdfunded to an extent through supporter packs, and have changed their development path along the way. I bought supporter pack for both of those and ended up getting somewhat burned on both of them. Mechwarrior Online has turned into crap because they sold these very awesome sounding design pillars and ended up being unable to deliver on them. What remains is a World of Tanks ripoff 15 minute meaningless MOBA or deathmatch type game.

Path of Exile had an amazing closed beta until up to 3-4 months before open beta and the design of the game started shifting. Now it's become an extreme grindfest that's very unrewarding unless you spend 10 hours a day playing it by which point you basically feel like you broke even at best. I think they lost sight of the the fact that Games are supposed to be fun. A lot of it has to do with the whole development mindset of Hardcore is better, or impossibility is the new fun. Streamers giving them free publicity, and I often wonder if they rig the streamers accounts so they can craft these amazing things with little effort while joe shmoe spends 5,000 fusings just to get a 6L item, has changed how they are developing the game and who they are listening to.

So while I believe crowdfunding is a good thing, it's very easy to invest or pre order into an idea or concept, and receive something totally different.

[dm 9]

Yes, and this is exactly what makes it great.

You take the control away from an accountant:

"Will this game sell X many million copies?"

"No? Change this, this and this until those numbers are more likely, THEN you can have the money"

it's very easy to invest or pre order into an idea or concept, and receive something totally different.

We do have to rely on developer integrity (to not take the money and run).

We do have to rely on developer ability (to actually deliver what they design).

We do have to rely on developer vision (to not suddenly do a 180 and completely change the project).

But, the most important aspect of it, is the risk is now up to US, and not some accountant who wants to see guaranteed returns. Which, to me, is the exciting bit. We have a choice, and as soon as people realise they can develop that niche game without having to remortgage their house and sell their children, we will see more variety in games starting to appear. Which I am all for, because CoD 26293 is getting a bit boring...

[Insanatrix 0]

Yes, and this is exactly what makes it great.

You take the control away from an accountant:

"Will this game sell X many million copies?"

"No? Change this, this and this until those numbers are more likely, THEN you can have the money"

We do have to rely on developer integrity (to not take the money and run).

We do have to rely on developer ability (to actually deliver what they design).

We do have to rely on developer vision (to not suddenly do a 180 and completely change the project).

But, the most important aspect of it, is the risk is now up to US, and not some accountant who wants to see guaranteed returns. Which, to me, is the exciting bit. We have a choice, and as soon as people realise they can develop that niche game without having to remortgage their house and sell their children, we will see more variety in games starting to appear. Which I am all for, because CoD 26293 is getting a bit boring...

Key word is integrity, not everyone has it.

I just wanted to post a couple of examples as to how you can easily get burned. In both of these cases, the developers are somewhat of an unknown. In the case of GGG, they're a new development team. For PGI, they're a less known less experienced team who's biggest accomplishment thus far was bass fishing games and the multiplayer portion of Duke Nukem Forever. I bought the smaller founder packs and supporter packs in both cases, because of that.

People go "ZOMG Diablo 2 clone!" or ZOMG Mechwarrior Reboot!" and just drop $1000 or $120 down. That's fine if they want to risk it, but it shows developers that they can throw up a concept with very little in the way of actual work done, and basically make money. Can you get your money back from Path of Exile or Mechwarrior Online? Even if you return or haven't used any of the digital or physical goods? You're locked into that the moment you pay. That's the part that I see as being very abuse-able and the most worrying. That's not saying that crowdsourcing or crowdfunding isn't a legitimate way of doing business or even preferential. It just has a very shady downside.