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Inside View of Epic, Preparing Gears of War 2
Subm writes "Lamborghinis, motion-capture rooms, secret new weapons — these are a few things included in the profile of Epic Games and its Design Director, Cliff Bleszinski. 'A Microsoft employee who works closely with Epic described the company as having a "band dynamic." Staff turnover is low, and many of Epic's most senior employees have been friends for more than a decade. This does not seem a very long time until one sits in on an Epic meeting and realizes that anyone over the age of thirty-five achieves the temporal stature of Methuselah. Epic's recent growth is regarded with wary gratitude by many of its employees, though some miss the old days, when, as Sweeney put it, "we were just a bunch of kids who had some cool ideas and were doing neat things."'"
Yes, karma bedamned, Fuck Epic.
After a fucking YEAR we're still waiting for a useful version of UT3 to show up. The same damn game that they once talked about having linux and mac ports for, linux and mac editor for....doesn't have a decent linux SERVER, let alone non-windows Client! And the editor? It doesn't even friggin work in Windows half the time. And of course, it's not ported yet. To ice this cake of stupid? They are bitching about piracy hurting their games. Piracy? How about releasing Shit? Any chance that has hurt sales?
At the moment, the entire god damn game still has limited functionality compared to UT2k4. Despite my friends and I having a one of the better UT3 servers, those of us who still play have pretty much abandoned the game. This, after 9 years of playing the UT franchise.
Fuck Epic. We'll go play something else.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Well first of all it's about the same features.
While all the game modes are more or less the same, niceties such as a PC-style options menu (i.e. meticulous control of the options), an included IRC client, and a playlist editor are nowhere to be found. I used all these features extensively in UT2004 and I thought it was a given that they would be in UT3.
As for bugs well what game doesn't?
I won'd deny that no software is free from bugs. However, I never experienced problems with an unpatched UT2k4 install, let alone the current version I have installed and play regularly right now. I'd be happy to remove this bullet point if Epic released 1.4 or whatever it takes to have the game functional enough to play without troubleshooting or ignoring features. Plus it's unacceptable to have this "beta" release as a demo. I believe the UT2004 demo had an update that included current code and new maps. But even if it didn't, the old demo just worked.
And last let us not forget that Epic much like Id is about the game engine
Being a "game engine developer" doesn't mean I'll give you a free pass if you make a shoddy game. That goes for id, Epic, or anybody.
So which came first? The low sales and then the "shitting"? Or was it "shitting" first then low sales? The thing about piracy is it makes for lousy ammo regardless of which side one's on.
It doesn't matter. If I ran a kitchenware company, auto company, or ANY company for that matter, it would be unprofessional and frankly stupid to insult my customers. If you've followed Epic over the past few months, they have acted atrociously toward their PC customers. Before announcing Gears of War 2 would not be coming to PC, they also announced that Unreal Engine 4 would be designed especially for "next-gen consoles first." Tim Sweeney is dealing with gaming nerds, he knows that sentence is flamebait. They have blamed the relative failures of UT3 and Gears PC on piracy, while ignoring the faults of the products themselves. (Gears was ported to the PC too late and too buggy to be relevant, regardless of any extra content they shoehorned in.) Forum topics politely voicing legitimate complaints about these products have been locked and ignored.
In other gaming news sites Epic still enjoys a level of popularity because of 360 owners who are hyped about Gears of War 2. Epic Games is a business, and if they feel there is more profit in consoles then that's their prerogative. Abandoning PC for console in itself is not bad. My anger comes from their burning bridges by treating their existing fanbase, one that has been loyal for over a decade, with such disdain. It's tasteless and PC gamers shouldn't put up with it. I won't.