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Sierra recalls Game on Account of Integrity
Isaac-Lew
wrote in that
Sierra has recalled all 50000 copies of their NFL Football Pro '99
game, and the company's presided apologized:
"I want to apologize to all our loyal customers for releasing a product before it was ready,"
They will be offering a full refund and a free game to
anyone who bought this game. Is this the end of the proprietary
software industry as we know it?
Sierra is the crappiest company when it comes to releasing beta software. I don't think they have ever finished a program before releasing it... EVER.
It's good that the software industry perhaps is starting to care about the quality of their products.
The only trouble is, if everyone starts recalling products released too early, then there'll be no software industry left.
It's simple -- in the cathedral development model, it's virtually impossible to put enough developers on a program to be able to release it in the timeframe required by the "creditors" (read "higher people").
Perhaps we should organise a team and start doing some really cutting edge game development under linux. Ie, a "killer app". I'd offer, but thinking of an original concept is not easy for me. Anyone?
TermII.
Consumer software companies (most of 'em, anyway) have to COMPETE for consumer dollars. If they get a reputation for selling crappy software, they'll go under.
;->)
Microsoft, fundamentally, is a monopolistic business software company that, thorough a series of lucky breaks, wound up with a lock on consumer PC software. They still have a business software mentality, and besides, who else are you going to buy Windows from? They can tell you to fuck off, and you'll just have to take it. (Until Linux is ready to take over, that is...
I'm sure there *must* be a reason for it, but why is /. queueing up articles to be posted hours later? Around 1:00am (CST) that game icon was up top bugging me, even though there was no story to go along with it. What's up?
I mean, it's not like this story was really worth queuing up till later, anyways.
Sorry for being slightly off-topic.
Most beta game I've ever played. The manual mentioned stuff that never appeared in the software, and inside the box there was a piece of paper saying something to the effect of "there comes a time when a game must be sent into the world to fare on its own...".
Too bad I was such a dumb kid back then, or I would have requested a refund directly from Sierra.
Fallout2 was released at least 3 months before it should have been. Under pressure from the marketroids who wanted it out before Xmas, Fallout2 was released in a definite beta state, full of nasty nasty bugs. I know they offered a 'rebate' to anyone who felt they were being used as an unwilling beta tester, but they shouldn't have released it to begin with.
Well, scratch original then.
How about a killer game 'enhancement' then.
Something to separate it from the breed.
I can't think of anything, if someone can, let's start work!
TermII.
I'm surprised they even did this. I've been gaming since the days of when they made King's Quest 3 and those were definetly finer times for the company. Most everything in the 90's has been crap. -jGondek gondek.1@osu.edu
One company recalled one product, and it's the end of proprietary software? I don't think so.
I'm impressed that Sierra has done this. As I just heard someone shout, "Like they should have done awhile ago." Yes, they do have a history of releasing software before it was ready. But at least they're doing it now.
And lest we forget, gamers demand their games. If a game's slated to come out "First quarter '99", they complain if it's not in the stores on January 1st.
Bravo, Sierra. Just keep it up.
OK, slight adjustment. Rather than messing with all the dull resource management like C&C (and clones), I'm more thinking along the lines of a Myth game. Start with a set number of units, and go until there's only one left standing...
It's to fuck with the heads of people who keep going "I'm First!"
The end of proprietary software as we know it. Oh, that is too, too funny! :^) *LOL*
Seriously, though, it would be nice if companies would put less work into features and more work into "bug-mashing."
I stopped buying Sierra games a couple years ago because they are uniformly buggy or no fun. Why is Sierra owning up just now? And why for only the one game? Sierra, why can't we send back all the other ripoffs we've ever bought from you?
The Apple IIgs had a game like this.. Where you would program your own robot AI and prove it against other robots.. Omega, that's what it was called.
I loved that game... even 2, 3, and 4 were good.
Then they got WAY to easy.
-=thomas
Gee, imagine that. They actually expect everyone who uses the game to have a licensed copy of it. How dare they! Please stop your sissy whining it annoys me.
Right, picture this.
You're in a large world in 3D, and you're really there, and you can see your weapon in front of you, and you go round killing things in 3D, and you can look up and down, and jump and duck, and it's all seen from 1st person perspective.
What? It's already been done? Oh damn....
If it becomes a buggy Microsoft Football Pro '99, no one will notice that the game is crap.
Bad software is expected of Microsoft. Sierra gets rich from the sale and absolves itself of the blame.
Sounds like a win-win situation to me!
Ugh! No. Can't stand there mice.
For one thing I use the mouse left handed and their mice curve the wrong way. For another, the use of the wheel-thingie is inconsitant from application to application (and OS to OS) si I try to use it as a third button but it just doesn't feel the same.
They used to be decent about 7 or 8 years ago, but quality has rapidly declined. Nowadays, ms mice wear out after a year or so. I recommend Logitech if you want a real mouse. :)
- RF (dfelker@cnu.edu)
So Sierra recalls one game that had a remarkably screwed up development cycle.
Programmers get transferred, management changes, programmers leave, the parent company's stock price tanks due to accounting irregularities/fraud, and somehow out of all of that a game manages to slip out the door unnoticed.
It happens.
Basically if they hadn't released it when they did, it would have never made it to market. (What's the point of football 99 in y2k?)
Linux (which is a kernel) is not a marketed product. You can be pretty sure you won't see any such bugs in a serious, professionally (referring to quality of the work that is) maintained distro such as Debian.
;)
Now, we won't even get into talking about Redhat and bugfixes...
- RF (dfelker@cnu.edu)
KQ1 was good, my favorite of the first 4 in the KQ series was part 3 though.. I thought all of them were ahead of their time, and was quite disappointed when they went 16 bit and dropped the character based "type-what-you-want-to-do" approach for the "click-everything-on-the-screen" one.
I found Space quests, and especially the first two Police Quests, and even Heroes Quest (later Quest for Glory) excellent. I believe Sierra messed up with their mergers and acquisitions. the quality of their software is waay worse then it was when it was more of a small software house
Anyone Remember The Sierra Network?
I used to love Red baron online
The "recall" is in name only, and is to protect Sierra from lawsuits, or some other reason, not to keep people from buying the game. I've heard from people that work at retail outfits that Sierra has made it VERY difficult for them to send back their unsold copies of this game. In fact, I was surprised to note that EVERY store in my area that sells PC games still has a lot of copies of this game on the shelf for sale. Check for yourself. (The game was "recalled" on January 20)
This ties into the "Ask Slashdot: Software for Youngsters?" thread too.
I've always been a sucker for adventure style games, and I've wondered how it would be to play with a magic system based on a real programming language, like Scheme or Smalltalk, instead of boring, prefabricated spells.
The game might or might not be centered on spell-programming, but I think this sort of thing could really take off if done well and made open-ended.
Probably not. Sierra has made a good move by preserving their integrity. It's a rare thing among big companies these days. They deserve some praise for their actions, as Micro$oft would _never_ do anything like that...
Actually the games has all the names from the trilateral commission on a zip file. Here's the proo-#!21@@### no carrier
Actually, it would kick greater butt if somebody managed to do a sophistcated adventure game ala
"The Giant's Drink" , where the computer draws upon multiple source of imagery and background data to more or less rewrite itself with each test or scene the player passes.
A BattleRoom sim would be easier, but a "Giant's Drink" adaptation would be much more of an accomplishment.
Although VALVe developed Half Life, it was Sierra who published it. And they are the company behind YDKJ, probably my favorite party game besides Return Fire on Playstation. Good? No. But they certainly don't suck their own ass.
lost password, changed EMail.. schmoko
Probably not, since nobody uses the words "Microsoft" and "integrity" in the same sentence.
It so happens, however, that some of us DO demand something more from our games...
Give me Fallout 2 or Falcon 4 over "Driving Action Game 23898" or "Tomb Raider clone 8321" any day.
Up until about five years or so ago, their games were always GREAT. Sure, many of the adventure games were a bit on the easy side, but they were always enjoyable and relatively bug-free. In recent years, and particularly since they sold the compny to these Cendant morons a couple of years ago, they've been putting out pure crap.
I still use my original Logitech bus mouse I got in 1986. Still have all the books and original SW for it too :)
That thing hasn't had a single problem in almost 14 years. Damn reliable mouse.
Anyone know if you can still get purely optical mice, like the original Mouse Systems mouse?
Stupid Sports Game) was released is proof that
Sierra's marketing dept. needs therapy.
--------------------------
Your Favorite OS Sucks.
^D
ZDNet news flash: Microsoft recalls entire product line claiming severe harm done to people that use the products on a dialy basis, company plans to only sell Microsoft ActiMates Barney toys in the future
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Sierra On-Line's 'Mystery House' (what you'd call low quality shit? Doubtless) was THE FIRST COMMERCIAL GAME EVER!!
Geez- you're comparing stuff from the peak Apple II/TRS-80/Commodore era with the _first_ stuff released back when there was only Apple II and nothing else (for a few months) and nobody had ever sold software in stores before?
Spacewar wasn't sold in stores. Adventure/ADVENT wasn't sold in stores.
I will admit I have _no_ Sierra games currently, nor can I think of a single one I even vaguely want- but have some historical perspective, man! Sierra On-Line were the first commercial game company _ever_, _anywhere_.
Of course, open source predated 'em >;)
Sierra has a dismal track record and has inflicted numerous "finished products" that were really just betas.
Hopefully this will be the beginning of a trend that other companies will follow. They're almost all guilty (Blizzard is the only company I can think of that doesn't charge gamers 50 bucks for the privilege of beta-testing).
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Other games don't do this? Besides, there are programs that will unpack those gigantic files.
Want to play multiplayer? Buy more CD's!
True for Diablo. False for Warcraft and Starcraft. Only one player needs the CD.
Want to use TCP/IP? Sorry, only through expensive battle.net!
Huh!?!?! Battle.net is free!
Require that damn CD to be in the drive all the time
Once again I ask "Who doesn't?".
A you sure we're talking about the same thing?
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Proprietary software may be strengthened by this kind of move, yes.
Should it actually start happening elsewhere, proprietary software might become a somewhat different (more dangerous?) animal than we know it to be, as the incentive to handle the debugging in-house would be far greater.
Software is too complicated to ship without a major collection of bugs. Bugs are so insidious and skilled at hiding that many only become known over the course of long use by large numbers of people.
Gee, now if there were only a way for a large group of people to look at the code, test it, and find all of the bugs before an official release.... ;-)
Posted by deskjock:
Barney is the only solid product Microsoft has
put out the door. My kids love it, and I have not
had to apply any service packs to him.
DeskJock
I agree here...ever since they switched to the "ergonomic" design from the Windows 3.0-era straight design, they've had a funky feel to them.
All the computers I use on a regular basis have Logitech mice on them; I got the First Mouse+ I have at home in 1997 or so (may have been last year), and never looked back.
Several hundred dollars a seat?
Very nice move, Sierra. I'm impressed.
I hope they didn't want bug reports too...
Time and time again, I've seen (from the inside, at various companies that I've worked for in the past) software that was released without adequate testing. Instead of stressing those parts that are particularly sensitive, and seeing if they break, all too often, some "magic" number of tests are run, under normal operating conditions, to see if it works. When it passes that number of tests, it's time to "ship it".
When a problem is encountered in the field, those same tests are run in field conditions (which, admitedly may not permit stress testing), to see "how many" fail.
Theories are advanced, one is picked by committee, and a change is made. If the same tests now succeed more often, progress is declared to have been made, and again, we "ship it".
Of course, the test sample is usually too small to come to any meaningful conclusions regarding improvement, but when the customer complains that the problem remains, we can say, "But look, we did 'stuff' and it got 'better'".
The advantage (?) of this approach exists purely in the mind of marketting droids for they can promise "a fix" by a certain arbitrary date.
On a related note, I've seen people in the business rewarded for "trying hard", instead of producing robust software, and staking their reputations on it.
Root cause analysis is often a tedious, time consuming, and painful task, often with little to show for the effort until the very end. (Somehow, "we don't know what it is yet, but we know what it isn't" doesn't count as progress. However, it is the ONLY way I know of to find and kill bugs once and for all. Unfortunately, this approach means that, "yes, we WILL find it, but it might take a day, or it might take a month." This isn't good enough for the marketting droids who's hollow delivery promises have come home to roost.
Recall? I guess, but it's tough to recall a solar powered weather station at the top of a mountain that requires access by helicopter. Multiply by several hundred.
Of course the silver lining to this particular cloud is that open source software results in such high quality that proprietary software companies will have to eventually meet the same high standard, one way or another.
In Liberty, Rene
Golgotha.org
/. yesterday (or the day before).
It was on
We can combine the traditional 3d first-person shooter with a symbolic algebra package like Mathematica. We could call the game Wolfram 3D.
(Waits for about 3 people to get this joke...)
-Eric
Hmmm... I wish some day I'd read a news article like:
Microsoft has recalled all copies of their Windows'98 program, and the company's presided apologized: "I want to apologize to all our loyal customers for releasing a product before it was ready," They will be offering a full refund and a free Linux to anyone who bought this program. Is this the end of the proprietary software industry as we know it?
;-))
While I don't have a very high opinon of Sierra, cuz of things like Outpost, etc, I must say that I was suprised by their handling of the Outpost fiasco: they _mailed_ me, _without_ me having to say a thing or even know about the opportunity an apology letter and upgrade disks, and I recently played the game again just out of curiosity (I don't think I ever played the patched version after I got it) and most everything promised was there. That's the only time I've had a company actually follow up on a"free product update" or even inform me of a product update just cuz I sent in the registration card...
Before the Brood War expansion, you could do the spawn install and run 8 people off the same disc, and everything was cool. Now after Brood War EVERYBODY has to have the full original version AND the Brood War expansion disc. If you try the disc-swapping trick, whoever doesn't have the disc at the end of the game gets a nice bluescreen. Whatta bunch of blood sucking pricks! And half the new units in Brood War (all the new air units) suck my ass. Why do we put up with this crap? And of course we'll NEVER get a Linux port either.
The TCP/IP thing is pretty stupid too; it's Win-don't, and it's supposed to take care of all that stuff FOR YOU. Whatever your default transport is, Starcraft should just shut up and use it.
>Console games have bugs too... Geeze, look at >Super Mario Bros... It had some weird ones... >Coins that would sporadically fall from the sky, >springboards that would stop working... Most of >these games have (at the very least) small >glitches. They usually do not get fixed either.
Really? That's the first I've heard of any of those bugs. Are you sure you're not getting secondhand crack fumes from sen"death of the software industry"gan?
Who knows, maybe if you hit the right combination of buttons at just the right time, the players strip down and have an orgy on the field. Or something.
This is a great move for sierra. It is good that they realize that they do not have a finished product and are fixing that. OTOH, I worked for a company that was working on a software project, and they wanted a perfect product, and had fixed SO MANY of the minor bugs in the software that by the time the software was 'ready' for release, it was behind in features compared to the competitor's products, and therefore killed before release. Millions of dollars and years of development down the tubes. There has to be a happy medium. There WILL BE bugs in software, and EVERY product is released with known bugs, some serious, some cosmetic. Its a balancing act that not too many companies are good at. From one extreme (My previous company) to the other (Microsoft).
Ugh, I played PSX Final Fantasy 7 for about 36 straight hours, only to have it lock up consistently while I stayed overnight in the Gold Saucer. Bgs always slip through, but at least with PC games a patch is possible.
?!??!
Want to play multiplayer? Buy more CD's!
Wha? Warcraft II, Diablo and Starcraft all have multiplayer built in...And except for Diablo, you can run multiple players off one CD.
Want to use TCP/IP? Sorry, only through expensive battle.net!
Uh...last time I checked, battle.net was free. (unless they've changed it in the last couple months.)
Require that damn CD to be in the drive all the time.
I can't speak for Diablo or Starcraft, but I almost NEVER played WarII with the CD in the drive. (Orcs are so much more fun when stomping to Megadeath)
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Not to mention that even WITH the final patch, it's still rife with bugs.
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Oh gawds yes. I was GIVEN Outpost for free, and STILL felt ripped off.
And LOM...Well, that was just insanity. I still remember the first time I finished the game. (After they released the 1.2 patch...anything below was frankly unplayable) The main bad guy just sat there like a lump because he'd given his super-neato-weapon away part way through the game!
Great AI code there.
But, at least they made amends by putting assigning enough developers to FIX it.
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Good. More and more games are requiring extensive patching after being purchased.. Pretty soon I expect to see software companies selling alpha versions of their software for 49.95 at EB. "Well, sure there is only one texture, but we got it out in time for Christmas!"
When something odd or obscure slips by(ie Bungie Software and the problem with uninstalling Myth II from a userdefined directory,) I can totally understand that. Thats what they have car recalls for...something invariably goes wrong.
But when halfbaked software is released as a full, complete version, come on(Uh, Rainbow Six is a great game, but geez guys, how many patches did it take before one could adjust mouse sensitivity? And I've never seen a game crash or show weird bugs as much as R6 does(and this is on 4-6 separate machines!))... 4 or 5 patches just to make the game relatively playable? Hm.
C
--
driph
Honestly, I do not want to have to download patches and screw around with drivers just to play a stupid video game. The whole point is instant gratification and relief from stress.
So I bought a Playstation. Buy game, put game in Playstation, play game. No muss, no fuss. The games are generally free of serious bugs; in fact, if a game has a bug, it's news. Plus, the cost of the system is so much lower than building and rebuilding an acceptable game system: I bought the whole Playstation for less than some PC joysticks cost!
There are still a few games on the PC that I like (Warcraft II), but by and large, give me a Playstation every time.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
They're in business because of:
Caesar 3
Half Life
King's Quest: Mask of Eternity
Return to Krondor (DON't buy this title though)
And I don't remember anyone but EA ever distributing the Ultimas.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
When I can get a mouse and a keyboard for a playstation so that I can play halflife, lemme know. Or when I can use my trackball to play Caesar3 on a PSX. How about Longbow 2, I'd really love to see all those controls on the pad.
Not to mention that I like crisper graphics than what my TV puts out.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I just can't see Sierra recalling 50k copies of a football sim because it sucked. Sierra has been unrepentantly making suck games since the 80's. What was *really* on that disc besides the game? South Park videos? Nude photos of the Sierra engineers? Plans for the neutron bomb? The truth about the Kennedy assasination? UFO guidance/navigation software? Or was it just a really bad football game?
0 1 - just my two bits
Does this mean that Sierra is breaking its trend for releasing what are barely beta games as final releases? I remember the first release of Lord of Magic was so buggy, I spent most of my time just seeing what was broken, it was almost a game in itself.
If you want a lot of people to start seriously thinking about open source games, then the Windows platform might be a better choice - There are many more people who use it.
Of course, an even better idea might be to try and write a game that works on both...
It seems to me that you're confusing 'free software user' with 'free OS user'... Being a 'free software user' is not mutually exclusive with being a 'commercial software user' I use several pieces of free sofware at the same time as I user several pieces of commercial software. I would also argue that as the userbase of windows is larger than the userbase of linux, you isolate more users by choosing linux.
By trying to make free software only for free operating systems (but okay, we're basically talking linux here) you may be condemning free software to be used only my the minority of users who can cope with the complexities of linux, never to escape to brighten the lives of those can't.
And that Mystery House game? I loved those games where you could tell what objects to pick up because they were the last things drawn on the screen...
Sigh... "sneakers" for Apple II is still one of the best games ever. H-wings rule.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
And that Mystery House game? I loved those games where you could tell what objects to pick up because they were the last things drawn on the screen...
Sigh... "sneakers" for Apple II is still one of the best games ever. H-wings rule.
And what about "Lemonade Stand?" That rocked.
Ok, enough reminiscing...
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
how about an Ender's game style space combat sim, where you strategize in true 3-space against an enemy (neural-net, perhaps?) which can learn from your strategy...
Aren't you dead?
All their adventure games were that stupid "guess the right keyword" or "go through the maze" type crap. No thinking involved at all. I guess they wanted to make money selling Hint books or hint hotlines.
Not to mention it takes at least 10 seconds for the page to render, locking up netscape in the process :(
Uh, nearly every game these days has a free beta. Even some microsoft games! Blizzard is lame, unless you like having your registry sent around the internet w/o your permission.
I stopped buying Sierra games awhile ago (except for the Caesars, they have been pretty stable)...but the biggest game heartbreak has been from Bethesda Software. Daggerfall is quite potentially IMHO one of the coolest games ever released....but it never reached a point where it was playable. I was excited about the multiplayer options in Battlespire, but it simply sucked so bad I frisbeed it. Annoyed me too, as I had responded to a Bethesda add about beta-testing it (Battlespire) and they never even bothered to e-mail me. At this point, even though bethesda has made some great games, I refuse to buy them unless I hear from multiple people that they are stable.....I'm still waiting.
Check out http://www.altima.org/ (saw the link originally in a /. poster's sig file).
=moJ
- - - - - -
Member in Good Standing,
I have Need For Speed III for my playstation and it crashes all the time.
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
dos is beta win98 just before they added all the gui
Eh?
if only interplay wouldn't be so greedy. They release MAX2, the sequel to one of the best strategy games ever, and it was a complete dud!
If any game deserved to be recalled it was MAX2. Hopefully the industry will follow the example of Sierra.
Joe
if anything, i think Sierra's move strengthened the reputation of proprietary software, by actually putting the customer first. that's a rare thing these days, especially in the software industry.