Slashdot Mirror
Gaming Gaffes of 2003 Pinpointed?
jvm writes "It seems that every gaming website has a Best of 2003 feature going now, and we felt that was just too cheery for our tastes. To counter that positive energy, we've assembled Gaming Gaffes of 2003 over at Curmudgeon Gamer, a list of the most embarrassing, disheartening, and bone-headed developments in the game industry over the past year. We've tried to give everyone a little frank criticism, from Sony's PlayStation 2 Online service through the lack of a Loki successor for Linux gaming, as well as specific products like EA's The Sims Online. Did we miss any?"
The bone-headed decision by EA to release SimCity4 before it was ready. Only with the newly released Rush Hour 'expansion' is the game remotely playable. And enough with the gimmicks like 'U-Drive-it'. It was fun for about 2 minutes.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
I havnt actually played it... AU$60 always seemed a little pricey for something like that..
but i did read some magazine reviews and they ASSURED me that the game was good. so I'm basing my post on that.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
My God, Nintendo announced at e3 that the newest mario kart incarnation would have online playability, but when it was released, it merely had network playability, meaning you can play with someone, as long as their in your house.
The warp pipe project does try to remedy this, though it's still a far cry from what it should have been.
How Jaded Are You?
It seems to me that icculus is the Loki successor. IMHO Mr. Gordon is doing a pretty good job in that regard.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
With all that being said, and coming from a PC gaming background, the lack of a service like XBox Live to sign into but rather a game to game solution to the situation hasn't really bothered me. I won't say it is unnessecary hand-holding but it is something I don't think I need to pay for. Now, what I would like is more online enabled games for the PS2 (and the Gamecube already!) but if there were going to be individual charges for games (that didn't have persistent worlds where there was a lot of overhead - PSO, Everquest), I would move to XBox Live. I'd rather pay a flat fee and get all the sports, fighting, and racing games I can play then pay for individual sports, fighting, and racing games.
Assuming I have misspoken somewhere in this long-winded rant and you have found my mistake where I said X but Y was correct, you may take my apologies and realize that I meant to say Y. (I just don't feel like playing the nit-picking game today, which is what happens on Slashdot a lot.)
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
IMHO this is the most embarrassing, disheartening, and bone-headed developments in the game industry over the past year: "one of the participants went to his car, got a gun, and pointed it at the head of a staff member"
Is it a boat?
Holy crap! It's Ferguson from Clarissa Explains it All!
Oh, and the fact that EA Sports Rugby 2003 is actually an order of magnitude worse of a game than their 2001 edition deserves mention I think.
This is hardly news to those of us who are paying attention: Rare (point #8 in the article) has been going down the tubes for far longer than one might imagine. Check out their back catalogue: They've made five (count them) games in the last three years, and only Conker's Bad Fur Day was any cop. That was long before the Microsoft sale.
Perfect Dark Zero? Don't make me laugh. PDZ isn't going to happen. There is no evidence that it's even in production - the character models that were floating around a year ago prove zilch. I'd be very surprised to see it this side of 2006 or the next hardware generation, whichever is later. (It never ceases to amaze me, the number of people who bought a GameCube for PDZ despite the fact that it had never even been announced... and the number of those people who then bought an Xbox for precisely the same reason...)
qntm.org
The Video Game Awards were a great idea, but turned out to be the biggest pile of marketing trash I've ever fast forwarded through.
I'll let SpikeTV off the hook, because I love MXC.
Star Wars Galaxies was a big gaff. They released the product very shortly after the beta and didn't fix a host of problems, the main one being the economy.
One very fundamental mistake was how they dealt with making people a Jedi. They proported let people be whatever profession they wanted, and that everyone had a chance to become a Jedi. However, those are mutually exclusive. It turns out that in order to become a Jedi, unless you got really really lucky, you had to drop whatever profession you had been working on, and start doing something completely different. Not only that, but once you became a master at that new profession, you had to drop that one two, and master other professions.
That's not choice...that's letting the random number generator choose how you're going to play the game.
A better alternative would have been to have completely seperate profession points that you had to spend in completely different professions beyond the "basic" set. You'd still be able to be a bounty hunter, architect, or whatever, but secretly be working on being a Jedi.
Anyway, since people have found this out a couple of months ago, there are already 100 Jedi running around the servers. I expect that to go way up during the next few months, unless they (the SWG team) step in to slow things down.
I didn't want this to be like Everquest, but you'd think these guys would have taken the hint and look at what game mechanics made EQ popular, and try and enhance THOSE, rather than doing what they did: taking a stab in the dark with a lightsaber, and completely missing.
In fact, by E3, I beleive they had stated online was most likely not going to be there.
I don't recall Nintendo EVER saying it would be online. From day one, it was LAN only.
I think this takes the cake for most embarrassing : Half-Life 2 Delayed Following Code Leak
Even if they didn't say it would be playable online, it really should have been. I would own Double Dash and the broadband adapter right now if it were online enabled. I know Nintendo doesn't want to invest in online heavily right now but I think they're making a mistake. As well as the Gamecube has been selling and as killer an app as Mario Kart is, I think Mario Kart online could have helped them that much more.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I guess you can't really blame the makers of games for the originality vacuum, if those games MAKE MONEY!! Just look at #10 for the reason that there's not more original games - game shops are closing, and the ones that have been bought by EA or whoever, is going to put out titles that make money. We've seen this with movies and now that games are getting bigger and bigger and more and more money is being spent, this should not come as a surprise. Makers will take less chances, and bank on proven titles.
But it does suck!
How about Halo for the PC?
:/
Even running on my 2.8GHz P4 it ran like a total dog
Online is a dead end. It has a tiny attachment rate (10% for the XBOX, which I believe is the highest). That means only 10% of xbox customers have Live.
Why bother spending all the time needed to make the game play well online, when only 10% of your customer base can possibly use it?
And why bother spending the time? To give the end users the best possible experience they could have. Nintendo's philosophy has always been about giving the customer the best experience and the most fun - which I've respected - and I think online play would enhance that fun, that's why. Maybe they won't make a ton of money off it and it will cost them time and resources but they'd deliver a better product. It seems like Nintendo has always been the type of company where that mattered - maybe management has changed...
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
He does have a point about the attachment rate, though. Even if you look at PC games, the only ones that have a better ratio of online users to purchases are the MMO games, and there's a good chance that Blizzard does better than the FPS games.
Half-Life has long been the most popular FPS online, and has never had more than 1% of their CDKeys online at any one time, with a total that might run as high as 5% (considering 7 million sales in the US, it's a better number than it might seem, but not a large return on investment).
Console games have a bigger potential audience, and it looks like the attach rate for online play may be higher (though with the online purchase not being attached to a particular game in the case of Live or adapters for the PS2 and GC that could be a misleading statistic). The question is whether or not people are ready to put their consoles online and play the games online. I really don't think you're going to see a definitive answer until the next generation, especially if one of the next-gen consoles comes with a broadband adapter standard and free online play on at least some titles. For the standard single-/multi- player games PC developers found that multiplayer will be a feature that sells titles but isn't used by most of the player base, meaning that charging your users doesn't work. On the other hand you have the MMO model, which works great for pulling in money if you can get it right.
Still, I would've loved to have seen online play for Mario Kart, but it didn't happen, and I knew it wasn't going to happen before I even pre-ordered the game (granted I pre-ordered the day before it came out, when there were already reviews from the major game sites). It's not like I have to play online to play multiplayer, it would just be nice when there's no one else around.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Because those 10% are your hardcore gamers spending a butt load of money on games each year(month). They also tend to pass the word along to others about such and such game.
Be cool to see some sales figures from that 10% compared to the rest.
-- taking over the world, we are.
I'm sure that no one will agree with me, but I hate HATE the 1.10 patch. I'm not a hardcore gamer; I fire up DII LOD about once a week for a little mind-numbing hack-n-slash with Conan the Barbarian. I understand that they wanted to make the game more challanging, but I feel like I'm playing with a level 10 character; it was too much of a jump for me.
Here's a quick summary as to why my level 50 barbarian that used to take on Diablo in Nightmare (without even using a health potion) is now routinely being killed by uniques in act III.
- The skills balance that worked best for my gameplay style are now worthless. Whatever rebalancing they did totally undervalued the skills that I chose to develop.
- My unique armor sets are now less useful than the regular dropped armor that I see after the patch.
- Items are now so much more expensive to repair. I have to fill my inventory with magic/expensive items to sell just so I can afford to go back to town for a "repair all". It also seems that all of my items' durabilities have been cut at least in half.
That's not all, but that's a pretty good start to making the game less enjoyable for me. I haven't read any other complaints like this in the few forums that I visited, so maybe it's just me. Anyone else unhappy with 1.10?
What about X2: The Threat (from Egosoft)? The first main problem - the only place you could get it on release day was from gogamer - it didn't seem like anyone else had it for like two weeks.
An even bigger problem was letting this game out the door with some major bugs - namely Logitech joysticks and gamepads don't work with X2!! (Like the Wingman Force 3D and Wingman Rumblepad) Doh! Apparently they went and actually bought some of these joysticks to test when they heard about these problems, but damn if it didn't put a damper on the fun of many eager space jockeys! Should be a patch soon.
Also in X2 there's many basic functions that can't be remapped!
This game is still really cool looking so far though - it's like Elite - but you can have more than one ship, run your own factories, and even control sectors. You can have capital ships, all fully modelled in 3D - including separate views for various turrets (which you can control and slave to any of three monitors).
This is what makes the stupid bugs and problems so bad - the fact that the underlying game just looks sooooo amazing...but I nearly quit in disgust in the first 30 minutes or so (actually it was a training mission that brought me back - when I had to switch views - discovering a rear mounted, controllable turret view). You can set commands for all your ships and their turrets etc.
And that'-s #11, "The Originality Vacuum"
I think this is only a perceived problem, not an actual problem. Why? Because there were plenty of original games out this year, games like Magic Pengel: The Quest for Colour. However, because they weren't sequels to popular games, they weren't hyped up as sequels. That's why most people didn't know about them.
Last year, was there a big, "GET READY for JAX and DAXTER" hype? No, because it was an original game, and most people just didn't know. This year, Jak 2 was Jak 2 and hyped as such. The new, original releases this year (I-Ninja, Metal Arms) aren't hyped up at all the same way, so it's pretty easy to think they're not being hyped when you're just being inundated with advertising that's relying on sequel strength alone.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Hahahahaha
It was like Slashdot posed for a family album.
"Okay Kids, now put on your WACKY face!"
(jazz hands!)
maybe i'm just releasing some steam over online play not being included? because i've got a friend from college who keeps e-mailing me and talking up his mario kart game when i know that i could easily send him packing with his tail between his legs but we probably won't hang out till new years eve and i'll, in all likelihood, be hammered. now if he ponys up and gets hammered too then i'll win BUT...if he decides to play strategically and plays against me sober, he's got a shot. so basically, i want to give out an ass-kicking remotely now so it can be done and the mouthy e-mails can stop.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Does anyone else see what is going on with all of the downsizing? Video Games are going the way of the movie and music recoding industries. Notice how there are about 6 major movie production companies (with subcompanies as well) that pump out all of the feature flicks (and their guaranteed four sequals) while only a small amount of movies are released by the small independant production houses?
The same thing is happening to the video game world. Big companies (EA, MS, SquareEnix, etc.) are merging and buying up smaller companies. It is ending up just like the movies, a small number of publishers will pump out title after title of unoriginal themes that their market research has shown appeals to the 18-25 age group. Small, but original, titles will still come out but will not have much exposure to the populace. However, when they do succeed they will be bought out by one of the conglomerates.
That one belongs higher than the #10 or #11 where he placed it, simply because it's effect impacts the entire industry for many years to come. We all hate the power of the RIAA and MPAA, maybe we should start getting used to SPAA (maybe Software Production Association of America)
http://www.tomandemily.com
now if he ponys up and gets hammered too then i'll win BUT...if he decides to play strategically and plays against me sober, he's got a shot.
;)
I haven't tried playing this one while drunk, but either I was always better at Super Mario Kart (SNES) when I was drunk or everyone else just got a lot worse than I did when we were drunk. Since it was basically one of the two games we always played when we got together to get smashed, I really couldn't say anything more.
That being said, I should have a review of Mario Kart: DD up tomorrow morning, on the same site as this article
-PainKilleR-[CE]
It isn't HL2-- yeah the hack was bad but the setup was so anticipated from E3 that it kind of balances out.
The real problems were:
1) Steam-- buggy rollout and ongoing problems, neverending promises of CS 1.6 till it arrived with bugs, and how the heck are you really going to manage all those HL2 downloads???
2) Condition Zero-- 4 (is it 5) dev studios couldn't bring out a decent game based on the most popular online franchise. A captive market opportunity squandered. As I now understand it, it has some bots for CS (uh where's the content?).
2003-- bound to show just how far a developer can lose its fanbase.
Half-Life 2!
Oh. Wait... 2003?
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I'm glad other's felt the same as I did. The VGAs were a disgrace, but I don't know what I was really expecting from a network that markets to the lowest common denominator of men who can't have entertainment without strippers, sports or people injuring themselves/others.
Everyone who was saddened by the VGAs should relay their opinions to the network. The five of us who care can make a difference!
Ah, who am I kidding... I'll just play Viewtiful Joe instead, the game that I think should have won best animation, or at least been a freaking nominee!
--- "Yeah, I'm a bit stressed out. I have a research paper due tomorrow and it has to be +5, Insightful."
The situation with games might be even worse, because while someone can buy/borrow a cheap digital camera and (theoretically) make a good movie viewable to anyone with a computer, vcr or dvd player, that's not really possible for games.
Well, console games anyway, but that's the risk you take when buying into a corporate funded content delivery tool.
I haven't been a pc gamer in a long time because of the steep price of (re)entry, but thinking about it, if the worst case scenario of game homoginization takes place, owning a gameworthy PC might be the only way to play creative independent titles.
--- "Yeah, I'm a bit stressed out. I have a research paper due tomorrow and it has to be +5, Insightful."
"...we checked out the E3 demonstration at the SOE booth last week. Everything was going swimmingly until the demo guy slipped and, I kid you not, said "In Lords of Everquest we have units from the Warcraft III universe.....ooops EverQuest universe"."
i ew =page.php&id=136
http://www.loadedinc.com/e32003/page.php?temp_v
Why hasnt anyone considered this idea as a way to get commercial games on linux:
1.get some tallented programmers who want to work on a port of
and 2.approach the makers of said game.
Basicly, the deal would go like this:
We (the programmers doing the port) aggree to:
A.Assign all copyrights in our efforts over to the maker of the game
B.Sign Non-Disclosure-Aggreements and not publish any source, binaries, data, information or whatever without getting it cleared by the maker of the game
C.Port the game (and, once its ported, organize some kind of QA for it in conjunction with the company that makes the game) to Linux with practicly no cost to the game maker
D.handle bug-fixes that are discovered
and E.handle things like writing documentation and install instructions and stuff
In return, the game maker aggrees to:
A.give the programmers access to the complete source code for the game (as well as the source code to things like dedicated servers, level editors etc so that they can be ported as well)
B.once the game has been ported and tested by the programmers themselves on their own systems, give approval for it to be playtested in a limited closed beta (to get it tested on as many hardware/software combos as possible)
and C.once the game developer is satisfied that its good enough, release it for free to the world as an "unsupported by us", "you need the original version of the game to use this" download
Does anyone know of a reason why this wouldnt work?
All the game companies need to do is to draw up some nice NDAs (and its likely that they already have lawyers on retainer who can do that), find the source code, and give it to the people who are doing the port (and who have signed the NDAs). Then, they are getting an (almost) free-to-them port of their hit game.
If this was fesable, I can think of a fair few games that this could be done for:
Tiberian Sun + Firestorm & Red Alert 2 + Yuris Revenge (both are based on the same core engine)
C&C Renegade (already has a dedicated server port to linux)
Warcraft III + Frozen Throne (dont know if thats still in active development with patches and stuff or not since I dont play it)
Diablo II (with the 1.10 patch finally out, its probobly as good as finished with now)
Rollercoaster Tycoon and/or Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (great simulation, linux needs more simulation games)
possibly other simulation games (I cant think of any others that are no longer in active development and that would be worth porting)
After Deus Ex was possibly one of the best games ever produced, to follow it up with the dumbed-down XBOX-level abomination that is Deus Ex Invisible War.
The people that play online are largely the same people that buy dozens of games for their systems.
Funny how, in a press release explaining SOCOM 2 shattering a sales record, the first quote out of an SCEA representative's mouth was: "With SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs, we have created one of the most intense and complete online experiences available on any console or personal computer".
Clearly, Sony understands. As does Microsoft.
Dude, if your barbarian is less than level 95 after a year of play, you're not playing the game seriously, or at all. And you're certainly not playing intelligently.
The thing about the 1.10 patch was that it gave everyone lots of new ways to play the game. Skeleton Necromancers? Good. Bone Necromancers? Good. Throwing Barbarians? Better than before. Elemental Druids? They actually work now.
Taking a year to make a level 50 barbarian means that you suck at this game. Taking that level 50 barbarian from 1.09 to 1.10 means that you're not very bright. It's a new ball game, and a better one. The challenge is great, and there's a plethora of ways to overcome it. Now suck it up, head over to a strategy forum, and bother learning how to play the game (because you obviously haven't learned how *not* to play a barbarian from your dismal year-long failure) before you bitch/troll about it.
*posting AC because I'm too lazy to get an account*
That was posted to slashdot 12 hours before this article was put up.
Aliens- so true, so true.
Everyone I know who has Xbox Live (myself included) purchase all of the A-list Live titles within a week or two of when they are released. Just to keep up with the Joneses. Looking through my collection, I purchased a total of 6 games pre-Live (the first 8 months after I got my Xbox), and 12 games once I got Live (about 6 months ago). Because those games are the ones I am interested in.
Some people wanto to sit at home and play Kirby's Air Ride for 9 months straight. I'd rather pick up a new game every few weeks, and go on-line with it.
I find the challenge of real people much better than even the best AI. I also like the challenge and excitement of new games- not the same thing over and over again.
No reason to lie.
Tomb Raider AOD... how can you forget that one from the list? Rushleased in time for the movie, TRAOD was the biggest lead-weight in the series.
You can't turn or run quickly, no side stepping, clipping-clipping-clipping problems, krazy kamera, awful voice acting that makes Hollywood 'B' movies seem professional. Bugs galore.
And you thought Halo PC was a porker...
How could nobody have mentioned, one of the most highly anticipated games of 2002, which finally came out in spring 2003, with gamers chanting "It took so long it must be good."
Why Master Of Orion 3 of course. God, I want my money back, and the month of my time I spent on the Quicksilver forums. A game that was both Unbelievably Hard to play, yet with such an idiotic AI that it was easy to win by doing nothing. They actually attempted to make a game that could play itself, that you oversaw which decisions it made for you.
A few desperate patches later, and you can find a squeal to a beloved childhood game in the bargain bin for $5.99.
Attachment rate is actually a very poor measure, mainly because it is incredibly skewed by people that own a system and buy a mere handful of games in the system's lifespan. As I've said in similar arguments before, everyone and their mama owns a PS2, a GTA game, and a Madden game.
That's the attachment rate for games, though. I believe we were specifically talking about the attachment rate for the online adapter. In other words, 10% of the people that own an XBox have bought a Live subscription. Oh, and I have a PS2, 2 GTA games, and have never owned a Madden game (just played the newest one shortly after it came out, and really didn't find any reason for it to be considered any better than even Microsoft's football game from last year).
The people that play online are largely the same people that buy dozens of games for their systems.
It'd be interesting to see whether or not that's true. I currently have probably 3 dozen PS2 games, and not one of them has an online component. I have probably 1/3rd as many XBox games and 1 of them has online play and another is Live aware (for downloadable content). That's just a personal note, though. My youngest step-brother was the first person I knew to put a PS2 online, and I'm not sure how many online games he has (at the time there was only one, an off-road ATV game).
Funny how, in a press release explaining SOCOM 2 shattering a sales record, the first quote out of an SCEA representative's mouth was: "With SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs, we have created one of the most intense and complete online experiences available on any console or personal computer".
Clearly, Sony understands. As does Microsoft.
Yes, though Sony's claim is hyperbole, especially when they include the PC. It is quite clear that although SOCOM II has a larger percentage of it's players online than Half-Life, the latter has still put far more players online. And that example is just one of many.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I would have thought I-Ninja would get some hype due to the other game it allows people to get.
Duke Nukem Forever is still "DNF"... :b
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??