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The Full Story On Warhawk PS3
TimC writes "1up has up a really fantastic interview with Dylan Jobe, the director of Warhawk for PS3. He addresses why they went multiplayer, and why people shouldn't be worried about it being downloadable. 'We had a few really fun missions. But a few missions don't make a competitive single player game. They don't. The bar is set, and it's set really, really high. And we can hit and exceed that bar in a multiplayer ... Just because iTunes is available now doesn't mean that music producers say oh, now we can do crummy music. Convenience is great, but quality always wins out.'"
Seriously, what? I mean, what he's saying is supposed to make some kind of sense, right?
Translation: Doing single player really well was going to cost too much time and money. So we took the multiplayer shortcut that is so popular these days.
Sometimes I really miss the computer games of the 90's. They provided such an outstanding single-player experience.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe this will preempt some of the Sony-bashing :P Plus, I'm sure that they pointed to Shadowrun as an example of this being an OK course of development when they found out they'd already destroyed most of the budget for the single-player game...
Wolfenstein ET, America's Army and UT2003 have zero or not significant single player modes. They have no issues attracting players. I reckon a good multiplayer game can sell itself if its any good. Even better for console users is that Warhawk doesn't even require a disc meaning you can fire it up in half the time. Which is no bad thing.
He addresses why they went multiplayer, and why people shouldn't be worried about it being downloadable.
I didn't see the part about where you could transfer ownership to someone else after you purchase it. Then again, they did say "I would agree. I mean, speaking hypothetically [smiles], I think there's a much bigger opportunity -- it's more than just high quality titles." so maybe they acknowledge the raping they can give consumers' wallets with this. Games you can never re-sell, that you can never bring over to a friends' house, that you can never lend... Sony will make money because of the way they inconvenience people.
So is there any word if you can put downloadable games on a memory card and bring them to someone else's house and play them on their PS3? You can't even do this on the Wii... because even though you can put the game on a memory card, it's married to the Wii that downloaded it so you can never play it on another machine.
Twinstiq, game news
How gamers will finance thier next game purchase when you can't sell the used one at the local shop?
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Dylan Jobe is the reason the project went down, Dylan Jobe is the reason the project wasted millions over the course of 5 years. He is giving interviews after he has been demoted severly because of his complete failure as a producer.
To add to that, Sony "finished" their firmware only two or three weeks before the PS3 release. They changed it non-stop and they keep changing it. Imagine working on a platform that has bare bones development tools and everything is changing out from under you. Now throw Dylan Jobe into the mix and you have failure despite a hugely talented team.
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Except in the case of Shadowrun, you could argue that going multiplayer-only is remaining true to its roots. With the exception on the SNES and Genesis games, the Shadowrun series was just another paper-and-pen table top game meant to be played with friends.
If it wasn't working, it wasn't working. I think it's cool that they have enough pride in their work to not release something if they don't think it's good enough. If more developers took this attitude, I think we'd have a much healthier game industry.
You can criticize the developers for not being able to pull this game off, but at least give them props for recognizing their failure.
If they put out a great game and price it right ($19.99), offer tons of new levels via dowload frequently, control the cheating, and make this puppy lag free. This could be a bonafide hit.
A lot of folks bash the Playstation network but I actually prefer it to live and am actually considering canceling/not renewing live. While not as slick as live, Sony's online experience is "mostly" devoid of the pimple faced brats screaming in your ear how much you suck, and throwing around racial slurs every 10 seconds. I love multiplayer but those types of players really have taken the fun out of it for me. Resistance multiplayer on the PS3 was like a breath of fresh air.
Hopefully the brats and idiots stay away from the PS3. If so, and Warhawk delivers...I'm sold