Chewing on the bloody stumps. . . what's left of the hand that feeds

[Akafrank]

More and more I wonder what it must feel like to be a developer. To spend years working on something, heart and soul, only to have your audience voraciously tear it apart, pick at every misstep, offer personal insult and in some cases threat. And then to have to go back to work the next day, if you are lucky.

I would like to give a "shout out" to some developers who have made games recently that I am just happy they made.

Iron Lore (RIP)
Flagship Studios (RIP)
GSC Gameworld
Silicon Knights
Crytek
Mythic Entertainment

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

Gamesradar did a thing on this a while ago when they talked to the guys who made Kane and Lynch.

From what I read it's like watching a close friend get beaten to death. All things considered it probably is.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

This brings up a topic i've been thinking about starting myself. Have people become spoilt bitches?

Mercenaries 2 has been getting brutally panned, with scores ranging from 5.0 to 7.5. I playesd the ps2 version and I was inclined to agree, it was one the most abysmal pieces of shit i'd ever played, and I've played the Spawn game.

But then I saw someones gameplay of the Xbox360 version on youtube, and I was suprised to find that game looked very, very fun. The gameplay looked slick, the sound was good- but to read the Gamespot review the game was a cumbersome piece of shit with pretty graphics and nothing else. Have people forgotten what it is to just play a game thats FUN? Is mindlessly blowing shit up no longer accepted? Do we HAVE to dick up the whole formulae with complications and over the top extraveganza?

Admittedly, the $60 price tag on most games drives up our expectations. Maybe publishers should take a goddamned hint from that and lower the price.

 

[The_Deleted]

The problem is hype and money.
Now, I was a little disppointed with the direction the last GTA took. But that is not to say it is in anyway a broken game. It handles well once you used to the car handling an looks beautiful. For my money, though, it just seemed to a case of the Emporers New Clothes and I get the feeling we'll get the same advances with future iterarions of GTA as we did with the last gen.

However, when people have been looking forward to a game for some time and when it turns up it's near enough unplayable, Mercs 2 I'm looking at you, or just no fun, then people should pipe up and complain otherwise we'll get the same next time.

If you were paying someone in your employ who wasn't doing the job you'd expected them to do you'd soon get tired of it and eventually terminate their contract.

 

[yourkie1921]

Mercenaries 2 has been getting brutally panned, with scores ranging from 5.0 to 7.5. I playesd the ps2 version and I was inclined to agree, it was one the most abysmal pieces of shit i'd ever played, and I've played the Spawn game.

Well of course you think so for the ps2 version. The game never should've went to the ps2.

Admittedly, the $60 price tag on most games drives up our expectations. Maybe publishers should take a goddamned hint from that and lower the price.

I know, that's so annoying.

 

[CasualZombie]

I think Silicon Knights made the first Legacy of Kain game! They could spit in my face and I'd thank them for it! (I wouldn't buy another of their games that I'm not interested in) but for this same reason I won't turn against Blizzard for the original core team members inspite of the legions of newer members and the "we orcs were FORCED to laugh when we were stomping on those orphans BY ALL THESE DEMONS (that didn't seem to be about at the time) but we're all really honourable people secretly (VERY secretly) and Elves (The pinicle of what's good in people) are evil smack-addicts and the Drow can be perfectly trusted I assure you!".
ps: notice the resemblence between Kain and Arthus?

 

[Humanfishboy]

Frankly the mountain of verbal hate for Spore annoyed me a little bit, it just seemed to me that everyone's excuses for disliking the game were a bit weak "gameplay too simple" "rip-off of other games" (because everything else is so damned original, right?) etc. etc. even the "it's not like that E3 Demo we saw" argument falls thin on the ground. There's no blood and your creatures can't mindlessly swim before stepping on land anymore. Big loss eh?

People just seem to be painting an unrealistic picture of games in their head and they really need to sort that out.

The game I'm looking forward to now is Left 4 Dead, but I'm not expecting it to be God's gift to gaming, just so long as it's fun, I'm happy.

Which brings me to another thing! I once saw someone on this forum actually say "Spore is fun, but it's not good" ... what is that!?

PS. Sorry if I'm coming off as a Spore fanboy, it's just the most recent example I can think of

 

[hem dazon 90]

im giving a shout out to ubisoft.

 

[squid5580]

Sorry but I gotta say what a load of BS. It's like watching your best friend get beat to death??? Really? Friends like that who needs enemies. I appreciate the fact you worked hard on your game. I'll give you an E for effort. If you put out a bad game that gets ripped to shreds by the majority of critics and gamers alike that we paid 60 bucks to play and you want us to feel sorry for you? Not happening. It isn't our fault you have deadlines. It isn't our fault that technology hasn't evolved enough to make your conceptions properly implemented. It isn't our fault your games can sometimes be more work and frustrating than fun. If you insist on giving us AI partners make sure they are intelligent enough to do thier jobs. If you can't don't include them. I'd much rather hear that a game is losing a feature than having said feature be broken and make the game not fun to play.

As for Mercs 2 for the 360 it is a fun game for the first couple hours. Unfortunately blowing stuff up while repeating the same mission with a different name time after time does get old. And the AI is suicidal.

 

[Akafrank]

More and more it seems, gamers in fact prefer bemoaning games to playing them. It strikes me it would be smarter for the industry to spend less time and money developing good games and just release better effigies. Why take the effort to make better games, to do QA etc. when the audience is more invested in torching them than playing them. Sometimes I get the notion that gamers little more than a mob, in search of a lynching.

I was kind of hoping people would want to promote studios/games they like, but it seems few actually like any.

NB Thanks to those who did!

 

[Talorat]

90% of the time, the problems with a game are something that could have easily been avoided with a little extra time and effort. Take Mercs 2 for example, if they had kept that game in QA for an extra month people would be lauding it as the next Jesus, but they didn't and they paid the price. That's how capitalism works. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to make a game not shit, I mean, when almost all of the playerbase can see why it sucks, the developers have no excuse for not seeing that too.

Tl;Dr: Its their own god damn fault and they should toughen up and actually try next time.

Edit:

I was kind of hoping people would want to promote studios/games they like, but it seems few actually like any.

NB Thanks to those who did!

Stop being a huge pussy and let the game companies take responsibility for their own actions. There are PLENTY of perfectly good game companies like Valve, Activision or Blizzard that can put out A+ titles every time. There is no excuse for shit. Stop defending people who don't even know or care about you.

 

[Theo Samaritan]

Stop being a huge pussy and let the game companies take responsibility for their own actions. There are PLENTY of perfectly good game companies like Valve, Activision or Blizzard that can put out A+ titles every time. There is no excuse for shit. Stop defending people who don't even know or care about you.

Calm down kid.

Also Activision and Blizzard havn't really released an original idea in years. Blizzard is worse, their entire company seems to be based on one release =/

 

[The_Deleted]

More and more it seems, gamers in fact prefer bemoaning games to playing them. It strikes me it would be smarter for the industry to spend less time and money developing good games and just release better effigies. Why take the effort to make better games, to do QA etc. when the audience is more invested in torching them than playing them. Sometimes I get the notion that gamers little more than a mob, in search of a lynching.

I was kind of hoping people would want to promote studios/games they like, but it seems few actually like any.

NB Thanks to those who did!

Would you be defending a studio or director who put out a bad film or an artist who gave us a poor album or an author who wrote a bad book.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Stop being a huge pussy and let the game companies take responsibility for their own actions. There are PLENTY of perfectly good game companies like Valve, Activision or Blizzard that can put out A+ titles every time. There is no excuse for shit. Stop defending people who don't even know or care about you.

Calm down kid.

Also Activision and Blizzard havn't really released an original idea in years. Blizzard is worse, their entire company seems to be based on one release =/

You gotta admit it's awesome they can produce a shit ton of profit off that one release though.

 

[Akafrank]

Would you be defending a studio or director who put out a bad film or an artist who gave us a poor album or an author who wrote a bad book.

Last I checked I wasn't. More or less suggesting promoting good as apposed to lauding bad. But I don't want to keep you, I am sure their is much to be damned, and so little time.

 

[The_Deleted]

Stop being a huge pussy and let the game companies take responsibility for their own actions. There are PLENTY of perfectly good game companies like Valve, Activision or Blizzard that can put out A+ titles every time. There is no excuse for shit. Stop defending people who don't even know or care about you.

Calm down kid.

Also Activision and Blizzard havn't really released an original idea in years. Blizzard is worse, their entire company seems to be based on one release =/

You gotta admit it's awesome they can produce a shit ton of profit off that one release though.

Surely the fact that they can live off the back of one game suggests they got it right the first time.

 

[Grampy_bone]

Looking Glass Studios.

When they went under, it was like I lost my gaming innocence. How could a company which made such awesome games die? Like the little kid shouting at his dead dog, "Wake up Spot! Why won't he wake up? He's only sleeping right? RIGHT?!"

 

[The_Deleted]

Would you be defending a studio or director who put out a bad film or an artist who gave us a poor album or an author who wrote a bad book.

Last I checked I wasn't. More or less suggesting promoting good as apposed to lauding bad. But I don't want to keep you, I am sure their is much to be damned, and so little time.

To be fair, in your OP you stated about Developers making & having to defend a badly
recieved game. But fair enough.
I think Rockstar have done a sterling job with bringing gaming to the masses as an adult past time and all but inventing a genre. If you read the interview in EDGE that was availiable before the release of GTA IV you cannot ignore the guys passion and trust in his team.

 

[The_Deleted]

Looking Glass Studios.

When they went under, it was like I lost my gaming innocence. How could a company which made such awesome games die? Like the little kid shouting at his dead dog, "Wake up Spot! Why won't he wake up? He's only sleeping right? RIGHT?!"

That fair brought a tear to my eye...