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."'"

Comments

CliffyB is a jackass

[ushimitsudoki]

Here's what you need to know about CliffyB's mindset:

Do you see the Xbox 360 as the main platform as opposed to the PC? During the whole Unreal time it was very much PC focused.

The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.

So piracy was a main point for you...

Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

But when the dust has settled, is there any possibility of Gears 2 on PC?

No.

Definitely not?

No.

From: http://www.totalvideogames.com/Gears-of-War-2/feature-13270.html

Re:CliffyB is a jackass

[Anpheus]

He's unfortunately right. He wouldn't say that unless there was a strong business case for a PC release not being very profitable to them. The same happens with games not being released simultaneously on Mac and PC. If the Mac release doesn't meet a certain threshold it's a loss and they want to avoid it.

Now, of course someone will reply, "Bu, bu, bu, Blizzard and Valve make scads off PC games." But I -can- play their games on my PC, and my PC is better than most commodity PCs, but not good enough to play Gears, or Crysis. The best I can do is Oblivion I think at 30FPS, maybe.

Re:CliffyB is a jackass

[vux984]

Wow... guess he doesn't realize that console games can be pirated too. Especially since GoW2 was leaked to the tubes more than two weeks early.

Not at all, he clearly realizes that.

He's saying, essentially, there are pirates on both platforms, but on the PC platform, anyone with a system able to run our game is savvy enough to be a pirate, while anyone who owns an xbox can run our game, and most of them aren't savvy enough to be a pirate.

Note also that he doesn't say that everyone on the PC able to run the game IS a pirate, although clearly thinks that a much higher percent of his potential market on the PC are pirates.

Re:CliffyB is a jackass

[caeos]

Well, I would have to wonder where CliffyB would be today if it wasn't for all the dedicated *PC* Epic fans like myself playing his maps for hundreds (okay more likely thousands) of hours in the original Unreal Tournament. If it wasn't for all of the PC gamers playing UT, including the vast number of players who pirated the game thus making it as popular as it was (including myself, I was young and poor when it was released, I purchased a copy later.. and UT2k3 and UT2k4), would CliffyB be working for Epic now?

Would Epic themselves be as well off as they are now if not for the popularity of UT (pirate copied players and all)?

Original CliffyB maps from when he was just a mapper and had no direct affiliation with Epic, I haven't played UT in years but I know these maps like the back of my hand:
DM-Barricade, DM-Codex, DM-Curse][, DM-Mojo][, DM-Shrapnel][, DM-Tempest and DM-Turbine.

As a core Epic fan for a very long time, I guess I find it a little offensive that I am no longer even considered a potential customer because I *might* pirate their games, not that anything Epic have released to PC in recent times has interested me.
I can understand console games are more profitable and that's where their focus is now, but perhaps as an Epic employee CliffyB should be more careful with his words rather then alienating all the gamers who likely played a role in helping CliffyB/Epic get where they are today.

Also I don't understand the logic behind simply not releasing a game to a platform due to pirates, Epic spent many years making PC games, is it really so expensive for them to create and sell PC ports that they lose money due to the number of pirates? How many sales would it take to cover costs and turn a profit? Instead they chose to snub their original fan base?

sounds reasonable to me

[spandex_panda]

To be quite honest, I think about spending $80 - $100 on far cry 2 for Pc (through steam, very easy) and hesitate. Should be a great game but its a lot of money.

Then I head over to TPB and see a discussion alongside an ISO for said game, its playable but multiplayer doesn't work. This option is also very easy, inexpensive and only limited by the no multiplayer factor.

So I am sorry to say I am tempted by the latter option, which means sadly that I give the developers no money. Perhaps they should make singleplayer free and charge a small monthly fee for multiplayer?

In conclusion, what he says is very sensible, they make money by selling games, not by having them used for free.

Re:sounds reasonable to me

[elrous0]

U.S. game companies get to charge Australians extra as part of a long-standing restitution agreement set up to repay U.S. hotels for all the damage Bon Scott did in the 70's.

Epic FAIL

[syousef]

Oh come on, it's obligatory! You just wish you thought to post it first!

Fuck Epic

[apoc.famine]

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.

Re:Fuck Epic

[WDot]

I was pretty miffed at Epic for making comments insulting PC gamers, but I picked up UT3 for the PC anyway because I figured I'd at least I'd try to show that not all PC gamers were 'thieves' as they suggest. It was underwhelming.

The reason PC gamers aren't going wild for Epic's games recently is because Epic stopped caring for PC gamers. The only thing UT3 has going for it is that it's prettier than UT2k4. There's less content, less features, and it's buggier. There's a fantastic mod community for it, but I'd expected much more official extras (like the prequels). There's no word on what's going to happen for patch 1.4 or indeed, if there will be a patch 1.4 (there damn well better be, voice chat still gives me issues over private Hamachi games!). Epic hasn't rereleased a stable demo yet, preferring to just keep offering their garbage "beta demo."

I hate to sound crusty, but Epic had a big hit in the form of Gears of War and all of a sudden decided that PC gamers weren't worth paying attention to. So they shit on us and then complain that we don't buy their games? I'm not going to buy any more Epic products until Epic issues an apology and makes a PC game worth paying for. Anybody who enjoyed UT/UT2003/4 on PC should do the same. I have a 360, but I'm not buying Gears 1 or 2.