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Starcraft Ghost Update
GamesIndustry.biz has an interview up with Blizzard creative director Chris Metzen and VP of business operations Paul Sams, where they discuss the status of the Starcraft Ghost title. From the article: "Basically the status of that is that we've kind of gone back and reassessed certain of the elements of the game that we felt needed to be refined. I think E3 was a big influence to us - we looked at other products that were in that genre, and felt as if we were quite competitive in many ways, but maybe there were some other things that we weren't getting to where we needed to go."
The development team has an unstated desire to compete with Duke Nukem: Forever's development cycle. Teasing people with little updates seems to be part of the plan. Am I the only person who doesnt care to hear about a game until its out?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-09 -20&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-06 -23
Even if completely irrelevant for loyal Slashdotters.
Because we are still boycotting Blizzard, right? Just checking.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Of course, because problems affecting 138,000 players are a NON ISSUE, right? That's assuming, conservatively, that those 20 servers hold proportionnate amounts of people as working servers, which is false (as the ones not working properly are among the most populous ones).
It's good to know that 138,000 people don't have anything to worry about. The game is working as intended.
The "relevant" part about Ghost is 1 question, and it's in the post. Fairly useless post if you want to know anything about Ghost. I have to say that she looks better in Gabe's drawings, too.
As far as another 3rd person stealth action game on the console...YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWN.
Seriously...what could this game possibly do that would be markedly different than other games out there? Have you infiltrate Zerg bases? Whoopty doo. If it comes out, maybe I'll care at that point, until then, I file all Ghost news along with the Duke Nukem Forever news.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
That is a false comparison. Movies are an established form of entertainment, and have a fairly well laid out production arc. Hardware considerations are a non issue, and neither are alpha and beta testing (and yes, I know about test screenings, and they just don't compare for difficulty). When was the last time you saw a "bugged" movie? Design in a movie is what's done before production; you don't write the script after you've started filming. Conversly, game design is what take up much of the production time, meaning that the number of variables you need to take into account is greater.
Finally, I would rather _not_ see the game industry become the next hollywood. Games are already too formulaic for my taste, and speeding up production in order to give a predictable product faster, *cough* EA *cough*, does not sound like an improvement.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I think anybody who's ever coded anything of even a moderate size, much less a giant project of the scale of what Blizzard would be taking on, knows that the unexpected just happens sometimes and it can set you back weeks, or more. Predictions of how long software projects will take are usually more accurately called "guesses". And trying to get a project out by a deadline no matter what usually means "Ship it with the bugs, we'll patch it later." I don't think Blizzard should be criticized for *not* taking this approach.
Of course, it's not like Blizzard products have never shipped with a bug in them. But I think the entire idea of polishing a product until they're sure it's worth putting out is a good one. Lots of good games have been ruined by being pushed out too early. And while Blizzard's development cycle is quite long, they don't seem to have a vaporware problem, either.
Course, Blizzard seems to have almost nothing to do with this game, so we'll see if they hold it up to the same standards since their name's gonna be on it.
hot foreign sheep.
From the article, about WoW:
That's one of the other things that I think is interesting about this product. It's really the only MMO that has an extremely long history, where there are millions and millions of people that are already dedicated to that franchise. They're already tied into the storylines, the characters and what have you, and as a result of that we think that we have a built in audience that is going to be interested in checking it out.
Uhm, I don't suppose you've ever heard of Star Wars Galaxies? There are, apparantly, people who are just a tiny bit attached to this "Star Wars" franchise as well. And that made it such a great game, too...
And, y'know, while on that subject...isn't talking about Warcraft in terms of its grand plot about on the same level as talking about the original Doom that way? I've played the games since the first one, and I haven't gotten much more out of the plot other than "Orcs kill humans, and then humans kill orcs." Admittedly, that may be because I filtered most of it out, but I still hardly think it's a crowning achievement that people are extremely attached to, character-wise or plot-wise...
hot foreign sheep.
I don't think it is true with movies either.
The predicatable part of the schedule for movie production happens after the script has been written and directors and actors signed. Predicting how long it will take for all of the steps after that is a relatively straightforward business.
However, before you get to that stage there are a number of steps which are not predictable. Someone writes the script. Perhaps it goes through re-writes. You need to retain the right director. Casting for principal characters needs to be done. All of those steps are highly variable, and are not easy to predict accurately.
Think of all of those movies you've heard about being "in development" for years. Remember back when the rumour was that James Cameron was going to direct Spiderman? How long has the Hitch-Hiker's movie been talked about? How many attempts at scripts for various movies are abandoned before the final version is settled on?
If you count all of that time, I would argue that while the "production" phase of movie making might be highly predicatable, the whole process, start-to-finish, of making a movie really isn't.
It's the same thing with games. You can have a long "pre-production" phase where you are nailing down all of the core mechanics and getting key systems and pipelines working. This is less predictable because of the iteration required. At some point, you're into "production", where you're just churning out content, and that phase is much more predictable.
Granted, movies are more predictable than games, but it's not quite such a big gap as you might first suppose.
Quoting Paul Sams:
"That's one of the other things that I think is interesting about this product. It's really the only MMO that has an extremely long history, where there are millions and millions of people that are already dedicated to that franchise. They're already tied into the storylines, the characters and what have you, and as a result of that we think that we have a built in audience that is going to be interested in checking it out."
Umm, hello, McFly?!? How about a little game called ULTIMA ONLINE? Perhaps you've heard of it.
Sheesh.
Bruce
Because I had no problem with Blizzard controlling their own fucking product in the first place, particularly given that the sole purpose of Bnetd beyond letting people use pirated copies of the game. War3 and WoW are brilliant games, the fact that Blizzard wanted to control a previous property (in order to prevent piracy, no less) is no reason to not play them.
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