What the hell is up with games of today?

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Original post by Zorak Starforce (copy protection) whined that I had no CD in the player. I ended up having to physically unplug one of my CD players, before it would run. ... So I uninstalled it. And had to use some shady applications to get the copyprotection scheme off my system (appearently it hides as a device that can make your whole system instable).

StarForce is certainly a nasty piece of software, isn't it?

shmoove

Publishers have become, for the most part, greedy, myopic assholes with vanishingly little understanding of what drives their market in the long term.

I can't speak for every studio out there, but I do know that in a lot of cases it has nothing to do with the studio not taking pride in their work. We get screwed just about as much as the gamers do. To be honest I think we'll see a sort of critical turning point in the scope of the next 4-5 years or so, when the market finally bottoms out on the jerkoffs who peddle half-finished games based on a holiday sales schedule, and we start seeing a nice healthy resurgence in publishers who actually enable their studios to create quality product.

Of course, I only think that on my optimistic days. The rest of the time I'm pretty sure we're all fucked.

Well first problem is you are comparing it to Sid Meier's Pirates. One of the all time best games. It is like comparing a play you heard about from a friend to Macbeth.

However, I think we need more people to try to become publishers for the little guy. I think Indy Gaming could be a hit.

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Original post by Zorak I felt a bit bored the other day so I decided I was going to my brothers place to borrow some games and try out. I have not played alot of games in the past year or two. So I borrowed two games from him, Age of pirates - Caribbean Tales and The guild 2. The former was not even opened yet, still packaged, he had no time to play it. Anyways, I went home to play Age of pirates, which I assumed I would love, considering what a big fan of Sid Meiers Pirates! I am. After the installation was done and I tried to run it, problem one arised. Starforce (copy protection) whined that I had no CD in the player. I ended up having to physically unplug one of my CD players, before it would run. After I had created my first character and entered a tavern to get some rumors I was booted back to windows. I repeated this four or five times. Then I checked that all my drivers were up to date, which they were. I ventured to the developers forum and found a patch that I applied to the game. Jolly good. I was back in buisness. I created a new character and started exploring the world. I entered a sea battle and every time I tried to fire my cannons, the internal(!) speaker beeped like crazy and when the battle was finished, I got booted back to windows. Back to the forums, I browsed the tech support threads and found out that this was one of a huge number of known bugs. The game was deemed unplayable by a great number of players. Alot had returned them to the store to get their money back. Some however seemed to have better luck if they ran a mod for the game, but the download was about 800mb. So I never tried it. I felt that I should not have to use a mod to be able to play a 50$ game. So I uninstalled it. And had to use some shady applications to get the copyprotection scheme off my system (appearently it hides as a device that can make your whole system instable). Anyways, I opened the Guild 2 package, this is a game I have heard quite alot about and know it was anticipated by alot of people. I install the game and start up the tutorial. Everything went quite smooth, for about 3 minutes. When I got booted back to Windows. I was thinking, "Holy crap, my computer is dying". So I installed it on my wife's spanking new laptop, same result. So back to browsing forums. I thought, except you cannot get into the Guild 2 forums, because it is "overloaded, try later". So I googled and found out that the forums there have been in that state for a few days. I could not even open a thread and read it, so no information there. After a bit of googling around, the best way to acctually be able to play (but appearently a bunch of problems persists after the crack/patch) The Guild 2, is to use a cracked version, patch it with some german patches and edit some of the datafiles of the game. Needless to say I trashed the idea of playing that game aswell. It looks nice and all, but the common problem with crashes every fifth minute is nothing I want to do. So I tried once again with Age of pirates on the laptop. But it crashed, beeped and what not. I could not play it for 10 minutes without a crash. Some people seem to blame Starforce, which might be true. But I checked the execution/error logs of the game and it contained hundreds and hundreds of errors of the type "cannot open texture blah blah", "Sound missing", "releasing sound"(repeated 400 times in a row). Alot of their scripts had runtime errors and what not. So basically it is just a buggy noncomplete game. So what the hell is up with this? Why do big commercial titles get thrown out like this? My computers do beat the recommended requirements on all points. So it is not a bad setup that does it. All my drivers are new etc. The only thing I can think of is that there is no pride in programming games anymore, it is just a factory sense like everything else. But two games, on two computers, on the same day. Seriously.

To be honest, I'm not surprised, due to never hearing of those games before.

I think ApochPiQ has a valid point there. Put the ever increasing complexity of games on top of that, and it's only natural bugfests like that are going to pop up. However, the situation might not be that bad: it may just give the indie scene an additional edge over top-tier games... ;)

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Original post by ApochPiQ Publishers have become, for the most part, greedy, myopic assholes with vanishingly little understanding of what drives their market in the long term. I can't speak for every studio out there, but I do know that in a lot of cases it has nothing to do with the studio not taking pride in their work. We get screwed just about as much as the gamers do. To be honest I think we'll see a sort of critical turning point in the scope of the next 4-5 years or so, when the market finally bottoms out on the jerkoffs who peddle half-finished games based on a holiday sales schedule, and we start seeing a nice healthy resurgence in publishers who actually enable their studios to create quality product. Of course, I only think that on my optimistic days. The rest of the time I'm pretty sure we're all fucked.

I used to be a games developer back in the late '80s and early '90s. (I stopped in 1996.) Back then, platforms were a hell of a lot simpler. Most importantly: platforms weren't as complex. I didn't have to worry about DirectX -- the last PC game I worked on used DOS4GW -- an MS-DOS 'extender' that came bundled with Watcom's C++ compiler. My last self-designed game was for the Atari ST.

I prided myself on the quality of my code. Downloadable patches weren't an option: if your game was released with major bugs in it, you suffered the ignominious process of a product recall -- asking for disks to be returned to the publisher for replacement by a working version -- which was, as you can imagine, not considered a Good Idea by the publishers who would have to pay for this. (That's not to say it never happened. Just that it was very, _very_ unusual to see buggy games released.)

The Internet changed all that: suddenly, patching was essentially free. Buggy software could be released without any major repercussions. Suddenly, QA became that little bit less important -- particularly on the PC -- so end users got promoted to unofficial beta tester status. Over the same period, prices have risen substantially, so a form of entertainment that cost me £5-£10 during the 1980s now asks me for £30-£40. Publishing also became big business. In the early years, many developers sold their own titles directly -- often via mail order.

We're seeing the dark underbelly of capitalism: if the market doesn't demand quality, it doesn't get it. It really is that simple. If you want to stop companies producing crap, _stop buying it_. Stop _stealing_ it even! All those pirating whiners who prate about how they want to see what a game is like _all the way through_ are justifying the charge-for-aftersales-service mentality. After all, it's proof that there is a demand for the game, even if you're not willing to pay for the boxed product. Therefore, it's easy to use this to justify charging for support and service, while treating the actual game as a necessary evil required to give the plebs something to call your premium rate numbers _about_.

Clearly there are enough people ill-informed enough to be willing to put up with endless patch-and-mend.

Clearly the market has not yet woken up to the great EULA rip-off.

(NOTE TO DEVELOPERS: Guaranteeing software functionality IS possible. If it wasn't, modern, computer-controlled trains, airplanes, X-ray machines and even warships wouldn't exist. If C++ is the cause of so many woes, STOP USING IT! If you don't demand better tools, nobody's going to make them.)

My dream is that, one day, people will learn to appreciate good craftsmanship again.

*

I decided to return to my gamedev roots two weeks ago and have started work on my first self-designed game in over 12 years. ("I'm a bit rusty" is a bit of an understatement.) Unlike most of my rivals, I fully intend to warrant my games as suitable for purpose.

Regards,

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Original post by ApochPiQ Publishers have become, for the most part, greedy, myopic assholes with vanishingly little understanding of what drives their market in the long term. I can't speak for every studio out there, but I do know that in a lot of cases it has nothing to do with the studio not taking pride in their work. We get screwed just about as much as the gamers do. To be honest I think we'll see a sort of critical turning point in the scope of the next 4-5 years or so, when the market finally bottoms out on the jerkoffs who peddle half-finished games based on a holiday sales schedule, and we start seeing a nice healthy resurgence in publishers who actually enable their studios to create quality product. Of course, I only think that on my optimistic days. The rest of the time I'm pretty sure we're all fucked.

From what I saw in my brief stint as a games developer several years ago, I'd say you're dead on with your opinion here. The smaller development houses are pretty powerless against the whims of the publishers, and if someone in the publishing house really wants to ship your game this quarter despite it's woefully unfinished status there's little you can do. That's one of the reasons why I'd be hesitant to go back into commercial game development for a big publisher again; it's just heartbreaking for that to happen when you care about your product.

I'm also hoping that this trend will start to cancel out soon, but I'm not sure how long it will take. I know that I now tend to only buy PC games on budget and have moved more towards console games partly for the quality issues. It's also really disappointing to see houses like Lucasarts - which back in the 90s was one of my most trusted and beloved companies - poison a francise like Knights of the Old Republic by releasing an unfinished sequel (now I don't trust anything they make).

I too hope for the bad publishers to die off or mend their ways, but I doubt it will happen any time soon.

I'm afraid things like this are likely to get much worse before they start getting better. To me it looks like the consoles are starting to follow the "patch it later" trend as well, now that most of them are online.

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So I borrowed two games from him, Age of pirates - Caribbean Tales and The guild 2. The former was not even opened yet, still packaged, he had no time to play it. Anyways, I went home to play Age of pirates, which I assumed I would love, considering what a big fan of Sid Meiers Pirates! I am.

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Publishers have become, for the most part, greedy, myopic assholes with vanishingly little understanding of what drives their market in the long term. ... The rest of the time I'm pretty sure we're all fucked.

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The smaller development houses are pretty powerless against the whims of the publishers ...I'm also hoping that this trend will start to cancel out soon, but I'm not sure how long it will take. I know that I now tend to only buy PC games on budget and have moved more towards console games partly for the quality issues. It's also really disappointing to see houses like Lucasarts - which back in the 90s was one of my most trusted and beloved companies - poison a francise like Knights of the Old Republic by releasing an unfinished sequel (now I don't trust anything they make). I too hope for the bad publishers to die off or mend their ways, but I doubt it will happen any time soon.

All of those look like normal business.

Let's just glance at the the movie industry, which the games biz often mirrors.

There are the major movie publishers. Look what they've released: mostly clones of successful books/works or remakes of earlier movies based on successful books. They look at what huge investment they can make, what set of stars they can hire at $20M each, in order to get a maximum return on investment. They don't care about long term relationships with movie-goers, just getting a profit. One of the easiest ways to do that is to get a license to something popular and make a movie version. You don't see risky new stuff like Napolean Dynamate or Nacho Libre coming from major publishers.



It's the same in games. You get the major publishers who are risk averse. It is easier to reuse technology and engines. It reduces cost to cut corners on QA, and people will still buy it if there are a few bugs. You get EA sports publishing the same games every year. Blizzard reusing profitable elements in Warcraft 1, 2, expansions, Starcraft, more expansions, 3, WoW. Doom 1,2,3 which were based on several earlier series' work, and Square has over 20 Final Fantasies in the series. Even more Roller Coaster expansion packs. Age if .

And as mentioned origianlly, even a remake of Pirates! rather than a completely novel Sid Meyer idea.



The major publishers are in the business of maximizing profits, and they do that best by thinking in the shorter terms. What makes the most money over the next three years? It is inexpensive to expand on something you already have. There is a big market for anything new in a popular genre regardless of quality.

There are also people like the OP's brother who buy the sequels and other big budget games regardless of their quality, even if they stay unopened because there is not enough time to play it.


Anything coming from major publishers, be it movies, music, or games, are going to suffer from the maximum profit view. It means remakes and remixes of popular stuff. It means buying Disney's Sleeping Beauty every ten years on a new media. It means getting a new Beatle's remix. It means people will buy Final Fantasy 27. It means every form of copy prevention and digital restriction management that they can imagine even if it breaks some machines or won't play on 2-year-old players.

The consumer individually doesn't matter, just as long as the company gets maximum profit. Consumers won't care for long, and they'll buy whatever gets released when the publisher rides the next popular genre wave.


You won't see that from small publishers or indies, since their goal is maximum exposure of their ideas rather than maximum profit.

I haven't bought games for ages. The last game I bought was Half-Life 2, in the winter of 2004. I didn't buy Episode 2.

However, I am often playing SuperKobo, Linley's Dungeon Craw, StepMania, Battle for Wesnoth, Perfect Cherry Blossom, Warning Forever, Every Extend, Grid Wars... free games one can find online, and that I found online regularly for the last couple of years.

I'd rather play old games (Crash Bandicoot, Total Annihilation, Baldur's Gate / Planescape Torment, Red Alert 2, Quake 3) than the newest ones.

The real problem with the industry today isn't where everyone thinks it is. The real problem isn't with the publishers and developers. The real problem is us consumers. We repeatedly and willingly pay good money for crap. Business is business, and there really is nothing wrong with that. They listen to one thing, money. Us consumers speak with our money, and what we tell Publishers is that we'll buy crap. You can bitch and moan and whine and complain all you want after you've purchased the product, but it means nothing until consumers start to really talk with their pockets.

The developers and Publishers can be blamed for releasing crappy products, but only us consumers are to blame for buying crappy products.

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It means people will buy Final Fantasy 27

What the hell does this have to do with bugs? [lol] All the Final Fantasy releases have been stable, quality products. Furthermore, they couldn't be more different from each other. Every title has it's own new gameplay mechanics.

In defense of EA sports, what do you expect them to do to their sports games every year? The actual sports they are based on don't change through the years other than new teams and roster updates. Every year they have some incremental improvements to the gameplay, and they add new (and refine the old) single player modes of play. The fans of these individual series look forward to them every year and can't wait for the new versions to come out, and you act like they are getting ripped off.

It's funny to see you say that, but as a PC gamer you don't mind continually buying expensive updgrades to play the same 3 games over and pver again with slightly nicer graphics.

Back on topic, it's really nice to see a dev let it slip on a forum that the game you bought that swaps to hell all the time doesn't run well with the recommended ram requirement, and that you should actually have 4x that much as a minimum! I guess it was bad for business to tell their customers that.

PC developpers never have enough power or resources for anything. New games coming out have to be coded against parts that haven't even come out yet. No matter what parts you end up having (or what parts it says you need on the box) the game would always run just a little bit smoother if only you were willing to spend a lot more on this new shiny part.

You don't find this out until after you get your game home and spend upwards of an hour installing it, and another half hour patching it, and then finding out why it won't run on the forums, dealing with the shit they bundled with it, etc...

Then you have the hardware and OS itself. Ten thousand versions and revisions of each. Everything you try to do, you have to be aware of tons of things that can go wrong. 20+ years into the life of the PC, and you still can't be guaranteed something as simple as a properly working timer. [sad]

I gave up on PC gaming long ago. I like to just sit down, pop my disc in, and enjoy a hassle free experience and actually have some fun.

Compare GTA3:

On my PS2, I pop the disc in, and I wait 45 seconds for the initial load. I get a smooth running game that is properly configured and targetted at my hardware, and I just play.

On PC, I'd have to sit though and install and patching process. 45 seconds in, I'm still waiting for the EULA to pop up after the installer gets done 'preparing itself to install'... what is the damn hold up? Just start copying the damn files over! The sound is inferior because it was compressed with a lossy algorythim (where as it all fits in cd quality on the PS2 DVD), the frame rate chugs because admittedly they messed up their renderer on the pc version.. oh yeah, I can play in > 640x480 (big deal... 640x480 is enough for me).

Sure there were some advantages. Modding, higher detail textures, nicer resolution. But it's not worth the trouble. The PC is so much more powerful, yet it can't just play off the disc and leave me without the hassles? I've never tried to blow up a car on my PS2 and got a view of my 'desktop' as a responce.

It costs less to buy the game with the PS2 than it does do upgrade my video card and ram to play this steaming pile of a bad port. [rolleyes] When I go to the store, I have hundreds of titles to choose from that are all different, and I don't have to worry about any of them. I choose whichever gave fits my tastes and bring it home. With the PC I used to have to read every box on the shelf to see if I could play it, and then comprimise on the game that would actually work (supposedly, if the planets were aligned, and there were enough patches to fix all the mess ups).

The advantage of a PC is higher resolution graphics. But they have kind of take a few steps back in recent years. Everything has to look like wet plastic lately. Yuck.

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Original post by frob Let's just glance at the the movie industry, which the games biz often mirrors. There are the major movie publishers. Look what they've released: mostly clones of successful books/works or remakes of earlier movies based on successful books. They look at what huge investment they can make, what set of stars they can hire at $20M each, in order to get a maximum return on investment. They don't care about long term relationships with movie-goers, just getting a profit. One of the easiest ways to do that is to get a license to something popular and make a movie version. You don't see risky new stuff like Napolean Dynamate or Nacho Libre coming from major publishers.

True of course, but the analogy doesn't work out here. It's not about modern big budget games being unoriginal and aimed at profit, but failing to meet a certain standard of technical quality, rendering some of them to some at least unplayable. It's more like buying a DVD and not being able to see it because the production house burned it on really cheap DVD's and your copy is broken.
I'm quite sure there are people who wait with buying a game untill the first patch is out, that's kinda weird isn't it?

I think you're just making sweeping generalizations based on two crappy games you played.

Do you have anything to compare this 'factory sense' to? Were games really less buggy in the past? If so, was it because there was less diverse hardware to deal with? Was it because the games were less complex? If a greater number of bugs exist today, is the only reason a lack of quality development?

The problem seems to be more that you (and your brother) don't bother reading up on the games you get. Instead you just grab whatever catches your eye. By doing this, you send a message to publishers that they can put whatever crap they want on the shelf and people will buy it because they don't take the time to read reviews.

Become an informed consumer and you won't run into these problems anymore. First, you'll know of the potential issues beforehand and whether they apply to you or not. Second, you'll save money by avoiding games that are not well made. Third, you'll be telling the people who make poor games that they need to clean up their act, which will lead to there being less crappy games on the market in general.

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Original post by stimarco We're seeing the dark underbelly of capitalism: if the market doesn't demand quality, it doesn't get it. It really is that simple. If you want to stop companies producing crap, _stop buying it_. Stop _stealing_ it even! All those pirating whiners who prate about how they want to see what a game is like _all the way through_ are justifying the charge-for-aftersales-service mentality. After all, it's proof that there is a demand for the game, even if you're not willing to pay for the boxed product. Therefore, it's easy to use this to justify charging for support and service, while treating the actual game as a necessary evil required to give the plebs something to call your premium rate numbers _about_.

Easy to justify? They would have excuses even without pirating, and possibly easier excuses. Stop buying it, yes easy, and don't forget to tell that all other people that would buy it anyway.
Change status of games under law in the same way how are perceived movies and books, and increase critics whining about released commercial software that is incredibly buggy.

It's illegal / half legal copying, not stealing.

(WARNING: The following post contains foul language, ranting and long words.)

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Original post by Raghar Quote: Original post by stimarco We're seeing the dark underbelly of capitalism: if the market doesn't demand quality, it doesn't get it. It really is that simple. If you want to stop companies producing crap, _stop buying it_. Stop _stealing_ it even! All those pirating whiners who prate about how they want to see what a game is like _all the way through_ are justifying the charge-for-aftersales-service mentality. After all, it's proof that there is a demand for the game, even if you're not willing to pay for the boxed product. Therefore, it's easy to use this to justify charging for support and service, while treating the actual game as a necessary evil required to give the plebs something to call your premium rate numbers _about_. Easy to justify? They would have excuses even without pirating, and possibly easier excuses. Stop buying it, yes easy, and don't forget to tell that all other people that would buy it anyway.

I'm sorry, but I don't recall addressing myself to "You, but not those 'other people' over there." I meant the Royal 'You'. As in "everyone who isn't the fucking Queen of England".

Those "others" buy games because they bought into the hype. WHO is doing the hyping? Answer: YOU. All those dribbling fanboys who seriously believe that a politician might actually be telling the truth than that their pet games company might -- you know -- actually be a fucking _business_, like every other company on the planet.

Carmack hasn't created anything genuinely new since Wolfenstein -- and even that was just a thinly disguised 3D take on Gauntlet. Half-Life 2? Give me a chuffing break! Peter Molyneaux is an egomaniac with a bloody good head for business, but he's not Mr. Fucking Infallible either. ("Hi-Octane", anyone?)

This industry has yet to produce a Kubrick or Spielberg capable of demonstrating a true, deep understanding of what games are all about. Where's the _range_, dammit? All we have are one-note wonders who simply recycle the same damned mechanics over and over again, slap on a bit more make-up and proclaim it as the Next Big Thing. ("Spore" actually made me laugh out loud at its sheer balls: I swear Will Wright could have named it "Will Wright's Greatest Hits" and it'd still have hit set the Internet Ignoranti a-slobber.)


There's a cliché disclaimer used on adverts for financial products: "The value of your investment may go down as well as up." There are no guarantees. EVER. Stop -- please God STOP! -- cluttering up the wankernet with wild speculations about how great or cool something "will" be "because X is a god!" He isn't. He's just some guy. Like you.

Why the rant?

Because all the inane hyperbole and word-of-mouth bollocks that appears whenever the Umpteenth Coming of some game franchise is teased on some website IS WHY ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE ARE BUYING ALL THOSE SHITTY GAMES.

Until the damned thing comes out and you actually get to play it, everything you've heard about it is hearsay and viral marketing.

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It's illegal / half legal copying, not stealing.

Copyright. It means "Right To Copy". Copyright laws define who has the right to make copies. Unless you or Richard Stallman wrote it, it ain't your right to dictate.

It's not a difficult concept.

If you don't like your country's laws on intellectual property rights, you're more than welcome to get them changed. You do not, however, get to pick and choose which random laws you're required to abide by. It's an all or nothing situation.

At present, copying someone's copyrighted work without their permission is illegal. Period. End of story. Please, please stop trying to justify it.

"Waaah! I want that cool game for free! Waah! Gimme, gimme, gimme!"

No. Stop being such a bloody child and grow some sodding brain cells. Content creators do not, contrary to popular belief, spend their free time swimming through vast vats of loose currency. Yes, there are exceptions, like Joanna K. Rowling, but she is just that: an EXCEPTION. Most songwriters, authors, games developers and the like are merely making ends meet. For every Ferrari-driving Carmack or Molyneaux, there are countless thousands more who are making about £20-30K per year, paying rent, and driving to work in a six-year-old Ford Fiesta.


Nobody forces you to buy games at gunpoint. Movies are not essential to your well-being. There are tribes in the Amazon jungle who have never even heard a

">Weird

">Al

">Yankovic track. Shockingly, they're getting along just fine.

This is why I like indie and online games.

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Original post by stimarco Carmack hasn't created anything genuinely new since Wolfenstein -- and even that was just a thinly disguised 3D take on Gauntlet. Half-Life 2? Give me a chuffing break! Peter Molyneaux is an egomaniac with a bloody good head for business, but he's not Mr. Fucking Infallible either. ("Hi-Octane", anyone?) This industry has yet to produce a Kubrick or Spielberg capable of demonstrating a true, deep understanding of what games are all about. Where's the _range_, dammit? All we have are one-note wonders who simply recycle the same damned mechanics over and over again, slap on a bit more make-up and proclaim it as the Next Big Thing. ("Spore" actually made me laugh out loud at its sheer balls: I swear Will Wright could have named it "Will Wright's Greatest Hits" and it'd still have hit set the Internet Ignoranti a-slobber.) There's a cliché disclaimer used on adverts for financial products: "The value of your investment may go down as well as up." There are no guarantees. EVER. Stop -- please God STOP! -- cluttering up the wankernet with wild speculations about how great or cool something "will" be "because X is a god!" He isn't. He's just some guy. Like you. Why the rant? Because all the inane hyperbole and word-of-mouth bollocks that appears whenever the Umpteenth Coming of some game franchise is teased on some website IS WHY ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE ARE BUYING ALL THOSE SHITTY GAMES. Until the damned thing comes out and you actually get to play it, everything you've heard about it is hearsay and viral marketing.

Check out Bioshock, Bully, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, and STALKER. Those are all IMO more intricate games that recognize what gaming's strengths as a medium are. If not even one of those upcoming titles excites you, perhaps you need a new hobby. There's plenty of recycled crap too, but there's that in every medium. Sometimes even the "recycled crap" can be amazing too. . . I'm looking forward to Spore, GTA 4, Quake Wars, Gears of War, and more. I think that with the games coming out now, there's no reason for such negativity about the industry. And yes, Ken Levine IS a god ;).