Dragon Rising has been released

[Richey79 10]

Helios - "We’re already busy designing and planning the next chapter for Operation Flashpoint. More on that next year"

Worse than this, he drops the bombshell that Lentil is in charge of the project.

Reminds me of what Kraft food's representative said when asked whether he thought it was strange that a (perceived) lower quality company was taking over a higher quality company (Cadbury's): "If it's in the interest of the share holders, then it's the right thing to do for us."

No doubt CM view the game as having been successful, judging only in financial terms.

[walker 0]

...No doubt CM view the game as having been successful, judging only in financial terms.

Hi Richey79

CM's Sales were about £100 Million for last year but that is before costs and CM needed an injection of cash of about £50 million from Goldman Sachs at the start of this year but many think it is throwing good money after bad.

IMHO CM made a loss on DR though I think a certain amount of massaging of the books could have hidden the case that DR was the source of the major losses from the shareholders.

CM are concentrating on trying to sell the Brand to Warner Brothers but they do not seem to be biting. I think the shareholders would be shocked at any offer CM are likely to get from Warner Brothers as a part of such a takeover.

Warner Brothers will demand to go through the books with a fine tooth comb especialy following recent revelations in the US Senate hearings about Goldman Sachs selling inflated price Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) to customers while betting against them with AIG. This was what lead to the failure of AIG. Interestingly the main thing Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, wanted including in the TARP was a bailout of AIG so that Goldman Sachs still got the counterparty payments for betting against their customers.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/07/news/companies/aig.fortune/index.htm

Like CM people no longer trust Goldman Sachs and talk of a case that will dwarf Madoff is circualting in the markets.

The other problem is that CMs brand is so dammaged by bad realeases of titles that the marketing equivalent of AIDS that CMs core brand now seems to have contracted has started to filter back into their other brands, with people thinking that any future releases will be faked up whoring of the original developers work under a brand name only; thus tainting the whole brand structure of CM.

Warner Brothers will not want to catch that, as it could infect their brand too.

If Warner Brothers do make any kind of offer I think it more likely to be a hostile take over followed by simple asset stripping.

CM stock with the brand whoring just is not worth it.

Trevor Williams, head of Codemasters Birmingham left about 6 months ago

Kind Regards walker

[Richey79 10]

Interesting stuff,

I've not been sure what to make of the Times article reporting that CM have been looking for new investment. Also the company seems to have had a very high turnover of staff for some time now (poor corporate culture). I still can't make up my mind whether they're in real trouble, or whether they're just suffering the same changes that are befalling the whole industry at the moment.

On the other hand, they've got the F1 name (which they spent a shed load of cash to get), and there are so many (console) gamers out there who are completely uninformed and don't even read reviews. Dirt 2 was pretty entertaining IMO. I do find it hard to believe that DR hasn't sent a clear signal to CM that they cannot produce FPS games.

It's an odd size for a games company to be. They're big enough that they have to invest lots of cash into every IP they have - meaning they need financial backers who then want a say in how the company runs. But they're much smaller than the 'big boys', and won't be able to absorb many flops.

We'll see what happens to them. With the nature of PR being as it is, you can bank on the fact that they'll be announcing that everything's hunky-dory right up until 5 minutes after the company's gone undergone an aggressive takeover and the only things that are left of it are a few game brand-names.

Cheers,

[Raptor13270 0]

On the other hand, they've got the F1 name (which they spent a shed load of cash to get), and there are so many (console) gamers out there who are completely uninformed and don't even read reviews. Dirt 2 was pretty entertaining IMO. I do find it hard to believe that DR hasn't sent a clear signal to CM that they cannot produce FPS games.

I think their F1 2009 was also another fail title. They promised easy to simulation difficulties, but I heard the game was pure arcade. I knew it was going to another CM false ads, since the console of choice was a Wii. Effects of the KERS system and slipstreaming were overexaggerated. What were they thinking? A sim on the Wii? Now, they're saying that they're releasing F1 2010 as a simulation/arcade game on the PC. Probably going to be another lousy arcade racing game.

[-RIP- Luhgnut 10]

What I think they are doing, is reporting X amount of new sales of consoles to the mainstream market. They feel that they can get a percentage of those new consoles to install at least one of their products. They feel that if they can at least get say 10% of the market to buy the game in any way possible (hype or reviews) then that's a big chunk of change. It could be nearly and empty box and in the case of DR a shell of a game, and if they hit their percentage, then they have reached their goal. When you have a 10% growth of console sales, and if they just even get a small piece of that, then they are in the money.

Since the average console player is obviously accustomed to having the bar already lowered, anything that meets that low expectation already set by the industry standard is a win. When peoples expectations are already set low, it's easy to obtain their goals. Case in point, look at DR, it is already by PC standards sub quality, but the console people are just in awe. I bet they cut the PC market right out, unless they just see it as an added boost to revenue's and who really cares if the PC peeps don't like it. We fed some standard garbage to the already numb console owners, made our money and move on.

[walker 0]

Hi [RIP] Luhgnut

Yes I believe that may be CM's business model nowadays. It is based on the old adage you can fool some of the people all the time.

Of course the injection of cash by Goldman Sachs seriously diluted the share value for the existing share holders but they had no other choice, DR really did eat into their business and it was probably on the verge of failure.

DR is like a millstone round CM's neck. They keep getting bad publicity from it:

...Of course the developers of that game were Bohemia, and they cut their ties with Codemasters, choosing to create their own combat game called ARMA. So really we are talking about a totally new development team working on this game, despite the same name. And unfortunately, Dragon Rising just is not as good...

http://www.gameindustry.com/review/item.asp?id=1164

And IMHO that bad publicity has infected their core brand and is rubbing off on all their products.

We have all seen the mass of comments to that effect across the game buying forums and coment sections of the game media articles.

Kind Regards walker

Edited January 20, 2010 by walker

[da12thMonkey 1943]

I'm sure that I have previously stated that there are no plans for the release of an SDK, but here is the reason why straight from the devs (without any dumbing down) on why it won't be possible to release one, as I realise that this is the 1st thing people will ask:

The developers working on the game don't actually use an SDK themselves, they have a massive pipeline that runs on build servers and generates data for all platforms not just PC. The pipelines the devs use are very large integrated tools with many points of data dependency (meaning you'd need most of the pipelines). They also contain 3rd party software which requires the purchase of licenses.

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/operation-flashpoint-dragon-rising-game-pc-113/404346-helios-please-sdk-kit-not-4.html

So much for that...

[Stryker_1 10]

Luhgnut;1549865']What I think they are doing' date=' is reporting X amount of new sales of consoles to the mainstream market. They feel that they can get a percentage of those new consoles to install at least one of their products. They feel that if they can at least get say 10% of the market to buy the game in any way possible (hype or reviews) then that's a big chunk of change. It could be nearly and empty box and in the case of DR a shell of a game, and if they hit their percentage, then they have reached their goal. When you have a 10% growth of console sales, and if they just even get a small piece of that, then they are in the money.

Since the average console player is obviously accustomed to having the bar already lowered, anything that meets that low expectation already set by the industry standard is a win. When peoples expectations are already set low, it's easy to obtain their goals. Case in point, look at DR, it is already by PC standards sub quality, but the console people are just in awe. I bet they cut the PC market right out, unless they just see it as an added boost to revenue's and who really cares if the PC peeps don't like it. We fed some standard garbage to the already numb console owners, made our money and move on.[/quote']

There is no doubt a trend that will finally eliminate games designed for the PC platform. I think CM made DR for the PC because they knew they would get $$ out of the PC gamers on the name Operation Flashpoint. I think console games do well because of all the eye candy, hype and marketing that is put in to it. It also satisfies the quick fix syndrome (like an addiction). Buy it, play it, trade it and move on to next title. You are definitely right about lower expectations for the games on the console. I am old school PC gamer and the demands from the PC community was/is very high and many developers have delivered. It's too bad and DR has really slammed the point home that as long as CM makes money, who cares about the game.

[-RIP- Luhgnut 10]

Hi [RIP] Luhgnut

Yes I believe that may be CM's business model nowadays. It is based on the old adage you can fool some of the people all the time.

Of course the injection of cash by Goldman Sachs seriously diluted the share value for the existing share holders but they had no other choice, DR really did eat into their business and it was probably on the verge of failure.

DR is like a millstone round CM's neck. They keep getting bad publicity from it:

http://www.gameindustry.com/review/item.asp?id=1164

Kind Regards walker

odd review.... he found the enemy AI over accurate? Hardly not. I find them just the opposite, spraying bullets everywhere, and if one hits you by random chance, it seems to roll a 20 sided die to see if it's a killshot.

The part about the menu's is accurate, but I don't see the enemy any more deady than a moth taking on a bull rhino. Again, knowing how they acquire target's and engage I guess gives a much decisive advantage than the reviewer realized, and if he did know, he would find out that moving up onto an enemy AI at a diagonal can easily get you within knifing range. if you stay 45 degrees off to the center of the rotating AI, it's literally impossible for them to hit you.

They had high hopes for this game and I feel they promoted it to their investors like they did to the public, but the reality is that it doesn't satisfy anybody. Also the problem they are facing in consoles, is that there is an endless stream of titles constantly being dumped on them. If something doesn't blow someone's mind, there's another title right behind that one, and with the attention span of a ferret on crack, they will dump it nearly instantly.

[vilas 477]

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/operation-flashpoint-dragon-rising-game-pc-113/404346-helios-please-sdk-kit-not-7.html

o my goooooood, Arma sucks and DR super ?

[TimRiceSE 10]

its getting a bit embarrasing to read now, cant the thread just die?

[Zipper5 74]

All these fans of the original OFP hating ArmA II. Many of the people who remained here disliked ArmA and dislike ArmA II because they feel that there wasn't enough improvement made between them and the original OFP. People over there hate it because

-Performance of the game sucks

-The single player sucks

-The multiplayer sucks

-The AI sucks

Yet 3 of the 4 are vastly improved between OFP and ArmA II. Simply put, they hated it but loved the original OFP because they expected a game like DR as a sequel to OFP - something that was radically different in every way, and because they began to play OFP closer to the v1.96 days. Not even based on the same engine. That is something I would apply to most of the current generation of gamers, especially on consoles. If they were true fans of OFP, then they would see the improvements in the AI, the multiplayer, and performance. I mean, if you compare ArmA II's performance on current generation PCs to OFP's performance on PCs that were there in it's time, ArmA II runs 1000x better. That's a fact. I ran OFP at 20 FPS on my first desktop, which was mid to high range at the time.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

All these fans of the original OFP hating ArmA II. Many of the people who remained here disliked ArmA and dislike ArmA II because they feel that there wasn't enough improvement made between them and the original OFP. People over there hate it because

Yet 3 of the 4 are vastly improved between OFP and ArmA II. Simply put, they hated it but loved the original OFP because they expected a game like DR as a sequel to OFP - something that was radically different in every way, and because they began to play OFP closer to the v1.96 days. Not even based on the same engine. That is something I would apply to most of the current generation of gamers, especially on consoles. If they were true fans of OFP, then they would see the improvements in the AI, the multiplayer, and performance. I mean, if you compare ArmA II's performance on current generation PCs to OFP's performance on PCs that were there in it's time, ArmA II runs 1000x better. That's a fact. I ran OFP at 20 FPS on my first desktop, which was mid to high range at the time.

Running the ArmA 1 stuff on the ArmA 2 engine shows how optimised it really is. The only reason it runs like a dog for most is because of the massive object density of the terrain, there's so many different kinds of trees and grass so densly packed. Sahrani runs smooth as silk on the new engine and also looks a lot better too. Goes to show that BIS know their stuff.

The OFP engine was DX7 methinks. I remember many engines running like crap on that, and running worse when you put a DX8 card in there. I think MS changed something in DX8 that caused lots of performance issues with older games. At least that's what I remember.

Edited January 21, 2010 by Madus_Maximus

[bascule42 10]

The OFP engine was DX7 methinks. I remember many engines running like crap on that, and running worse when you put a DX8 card in there. I think MS changed something in DX8 that caused lots of performance issues with older games. At least that's what I remember.

Just had a look at the back of the box, (original release), it was DX8.

[kernriver 4]

Luhgnut;1550224']odd review.... he found the enemy AI over accurate? Hardly not. I find them just the opposite' date=' spraying bullets everywhere, and if one hits you by random chance, it seems to roll a 20 sided die to see if it's a killshot.

The part about the menu's is accurate, but I don't see the enemy any more deady than a moth taking on a bull rhino. Again, knowing how they acquire target's and engage I guess gives a much decisive advantage than the reviewer realized, and if he did know, he would find out that moving up onto an enemy AI at a diagonal can easily get you within knifing range. if you stay 45 degrees off to the center of the rotating AI, it's literally impossible for them to hit you.

They had high hopes for this game and I feel they promoted it to their investors like they did to the public, but the reality is that it doesn't satisfy anybody. Also the problem they are facing in consoles, is that there is an endless stream of titles constantly being dumped on them. If something doesn't blow someone's mind, there's another title right behind that one, and with the attention span of a ferret on crack, they will dump it nearly instantly.[/quote']

Yeah, that review sounds like he was playing totally different game, regarding AI shooting skills. He's right about AI stupidity though.

And no magic health packs? Well, you can't pick them up, but you don't have to since they are in your inventory...

Blah, this is turning into a farce.

@Tonci87

Lijepa slika :)

[Madus_Maximus 0]

Just had a look at the back of the box, (original release), it was DX8.

I'm pretty sure it was DX7, maybe DX8 was recommended? Either way it seemed to run worse on cards made for the version above what the game required for some reason. Well, worse in relation to the extra power the card had. I remember it running perfectly fine whilst using Fraps on a GeForce 2 but it sucked on a GeForce 3, 4 and 5, the frame rate was naff! It didn't seem to improve at all in normal play, but Fraps killed it.

I vaigely remember a few other games at the time running like crap on the newer hardware too like Empire Earth.

[Bulldogs 10]

Yarr, I remember when I upgraded to a geforce 4 the red bushes started to lag me out

btw, happy 350th page

[VictorTroska 0]

I'm pretty sure it was DX7, maybe DX8 was recommended? Either way it seemed to run worse on cards made for the version above what the game required for some reason. Well, worse in relation to the extra power the card had. I remember it running perfectly fine whilst using Fraps on a GeForce 2 but it sucked on a GeForce 3, 4 and 5, the frame rate was naff! It didn't seem to improve at all in normal play, but Fraps killed it.

I vaigely remember a few other games at the time running like crap on the newer hardware too like Empire Earth.

Yeah DX7 was minimum requirement, but on box was DX8 and on GOTY edition 8.1

[walker 0]

Hi all

What is shocking is that DR never even aproached the capabilities of BIS's original OFP.

No Civilians

No Flyable Jets

Micro entity count

An AI that would not tax a slug

Arcade end level boss airstrikes

Arcade magic health packs

Micro Battles

Micro Multiplayer

No internal Editor and no editor at all for the consoles.

The plain fact is DR was not even as technically advanced as a game created ten years earlier on DX7.

That is what drove customers away, they realised they were being ripped off. So it is no wonder it adversly affected CM's brand especialy after 3 other similar name but not the developer products. Buyers have I hope become wise to the the trick of whoring the brand.

Sady walker

Edited January 21, 2010 by walker

[Bulldogs 10]

Out of boredom I had a look around for old reviews of Arma 2 and DR. It's funny what you find. There was one video review that couldn't sing DR enough praises, even mentioning "the original developers moved onto another scene and now the true sequel has arrived", same review saying that dr is the hardest game you'll ever play and the online multiplayer is flawless.

Looked over gametrailers old arma 2 review that I thought was pretty accurate at the time. Basically calling the game brilliant but mentioning that the bugs need to be ironed out.

Of course all these videos have brilliant user comments like "see they got a new chopper in arma 2, game should have had more vehicles in the first place like dragon rising", and the great replies to DR videos of "DR isn't very realistic, it's lacking in many areas, not a sim, etc" that usually get responses of "you're just a CoD fanboy who can't handle the difficulty", one went as far as to say "maybe you should google mil-sim then go back to your arcade game" (this comment being in response to someone talking about Arma 2 in a DR video review thread.

[Zipper5 74]

It becomes painstakingly obvious post-release how many previewers were bought by CM to praise the game. Oh well, it was during the economic recession after all. It did sucker a lot of people into buying the game, however, which is just wrong. CM display some of the worst business practices I have seen in a long time.

[myshaak 0]

Another piece of news from CM:

As the sounds you will be able to add to the game are all called in by the playOneShotSound() command, it does not look like you will be able to change existing game sounds, or switch out sounds used by game objects such as guns, vehicles etc…(sorry).

Also after checking it won't be possible to import your own 3D models.

Oooo-kaaaay...

I really feel sorry for those guys on CM forums in the modding section (whatever CM staff thinks "modding" means) devoting their time to creating models in hope that it may be possible to import it...

Well, I'm pretty sure there is a good reason why CM didn't announce this sooner :)

($$$)

[Zipper5 74]

Well, I guess CM realized that they weren't making any significant profit off of DR anymore so they decided to drop all of the bombshells and announce that they themselves screwed everyone. Hopefully there will be no DR2 after this... If there is a God... :butbut:

[walker 0]

... Hopefully there will be no DR2 after this... If there is a God... :butbut:

Hi Zipper5

You are forgetting:

"You can fool some of the people all the time."

Of course it is not a long term business model as such customers are by their very nature loosers and not likely to have much disposable income for games.

Kind Regards walker

[Zipper5 74]

It is indeed unfortunate that is the case. Just take a look at the posters on the "other forum". CM keeps dropping these massive "we scammed you all" posts, and they seem to act like nothing's happened, or that what has happened is relatively minor. These are people who will be continuously suckered into things in life. Fool them once, and they'll let you fool them over, and over, and over, and over, and over...