Re:Bad reviews on Vampire: Bloodlines the cause?
on
Troika Games Closes
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· Score: 1
Try telling that to a company that is releasing simultaneously on multiple platforms (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, maybe PC, maybe Xbox 2 and PSP) in multiple languages (at least North American English, UK English, French, Spanish and German).
They had good ideas but terrible execution. Their games were consistently buggy as hell. Nobody wants to pick up a company that can't produce solid games on schedule that sell a lot of units. C.R.E.A.M.
Also the RPG market is a niche. It's small potatoes for EA. There are really only two consistently performing North American companies doing RPGs - Bethesda and Bioware. Not a lot of room there for underperformers when those two are kicking out great games (although both also have technical issues).
The trick for someone like that is to give everyone the same grade. Say, B+. That way the grade grubbers don't take the class because they can't get a B+. The kids on scholarships don't get screwed. And the people who just want the B+ sign up but never show. So you only get folks who give 2 shits. I took a class with Richard Lewontin and that was his policy for certain classes (maybe all of them, I don't know). It worked pretty well.
That's little dick syndrome. The "real worlders" always think that experience is the only teacher. I'm not a huge fan of the non-degree folks I've worked with. Some are very good. The majority have wacked out egos because they don't have a concept of the field as a whole, just their little piece, which makes them overestimate their knowledge and ability. The ego thing is also because of the inferiority complex they have because they didn't go to school. So they sit around and poo-poo school and all that book learning that the kids have, slap themselves on the back for not going that dead end route. I've also worked with fresh faced grads that couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. Or have the first job ego: "I produced something that actually works, I'm awesome!" And anyone who uses goto in anything but the most brain dead of situations gets a swift kick in the junk. I don't give a shit who the person is, someone is going to have to read that code, goto generally doesn't help.
In some places royalties are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I'm not sure what kind of royalty deal Rock Star North has but when you're working on a project that generates 2 million sales in a couple weeks there's a lot of money in the potential royalty pot. I imagine Bungie folks are looking forward to some fat checks right now. Whether those are royalty or bonus checks, I don't know. And I've heard good things about the kind of money the GT team gets. But the point is that in some of these places folks are working stupid hours on the assumption that they'll get a big payoff at the end. At EA, I don't know what they hell they're hoping.
The key thing when looking at a game job is to ask around about the crunch, its going to happen but some places are better than others. Folks in the industry usually know the hell holes that suck up college talent and spit out jaded, burnt out husks. Ask about royalties and bonuses. Check out the cars that people drive. Not just the senior people, the mere programmers as well. Look at the numbers for the games the studio has released; have they sold well? How are the reviews? And remember that sometimes an EA is worth it if you get your name on some huge title that sells like crazy. Once you get that first title to your name things get a hell of a lot easier in the industry.
In the console world everyone is going towards having friends, buddies, clan lists that are shared across games. With that comes presence information as well. Don't fear it. Its a good thing.
Nihilist is never going to be shipping Ghost. They were pulled and Swingin Ape is doing it now. Its really Blizzards game. They're just paying another studio to do it.
I'm not sure where you're getting the slashdot aspect of this from but Bungie is not a small developer. They are a 1st party title. Just like Jak and Daxter 3, Ratchet and Clank and Killzone. Microsoft ponied up the dough to make it. While that doesn't make them a massive studio it does make their lives really easy. They don't worry about publishing, marketing (not like they need much) or where the monthly checks are coming from. Plus with the success of Halo they could basically do whatever they wanted. Without Halo their is no XBox.
Game programming is like any other type of programming. It has its challenges but overall its software engineering. "Game developer" is overly broad. The programming side of the house is a technical entity which manages software development. While I love programming and think of it as being creative it is a craft and a discipline.
I see the problem as an inability to get down to doing actual software engineering. Too many people in the industry are talented hacks who get by because they're willing to work all night. They're hacked out solution ends up being a barely working house of cards. The designers show up and want something changed. Since games aren't architected, they're ad-hoc collections of poorly tested code everything takes longer than it should and everyone works stupid hours.
That being said EA sucks. Any game company that doesn't hand out royalties and gives shitty bonuses can kiss my ass. Tiburon is supposedly the worst. Their bonuses are supposed to be absolutely terrible. And, of course, no royalties. Sony is pretty good. Royalties and decent bonuses. So the game does well and the people do well.
No, but they're as credible. Journalism is now a game for career minded folks to kiss, get invited to the cool parties and tv shows and then write about their ins. Someone like Adam Nagourney or Judy Woodruff gets to be a complete hack, basing A1 stories on a few "highly placed anonymous sources" and they're a star. They have to continue to play nice to get the sekrit info. But Sydney Blumenthaul and Sy Hersch get black balled for not pulling their punches. The white house press corps essentially needs to spin things the white house way or they don't get access. The entire industry is screwed.
That's the biggest load of shit. Which Repubs were being treated poorly under Clinton? Oh yeah, none. What you "conservatives" don't get is that Dems don't go around punishing their opponents, they get shit done. That's why under Clinton we had a good economy, we had a reduced deficit despite the right wing plots to take him down. He didn't spend his time getting Gingrich on the no fly list. So I guess the rethug congress also wasted millions of dollars investigating shit that never happened.
But then the point that somehow its easier to port from xbox 2 to mac is bogus. If you have an abstracted API then it is easier to port to PC, PS2/3, gamecube, GBA and also Apples. So what. It is an obvious point. It has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying processor. Plus you still have to have someone worry about doing the underlying work to make the API work on top of DirectWhatever, GameSockets or whatever Apple wants to use, SCE's lib and PS2/3 hardware crap. Screw that. Go where the money is, PS2 and Xbox.
Screw that, go to consoles. Currently that's where its at. PC games are old hat. The last good game I player on PC was Theif and I could have player it on my xbox. So, skip the pc crap and go get one of each console. You save money and end up with a lot more games.
Wow, what a surprise, E5 and up are voting republican. Fuck the privates, lets talk to the officers. Its hard to believe that the majority of those polled supports Bush when, more than half of those polled had never served in Afghanistan or Iraq, had never even done a tour of duty, were officers and were older than 28. I didn't realize that 70% of our military men and women were mid-level enlisted folks but what the hell.
How do you explain 8 years of doggedly attacking Clinton with nothing. Not a fucking spec of evidence. How many millions of dollars did we spend on bogus info? Lisa Meiers sitting on TV and playing bogus out of context quotes from the Clintons? Every talking heads show on TV basically having all conservatives? No Eleanor Clift isn't liberal. She's a spineless moderate who concedes every fucking RNC talking point. I don't actually think the media is biased. I think they're spineless, careerists who are merely interested in blowing huge stories on to the front page. Judith Miller is a perfect example, so is Adam Nagourney. The Repubs are much better at working the media right now. So the media tends to play Repub talking points better. The Dems are working on it but haven't caught up yet. The CBS thing in no way "blatent (sic)" Kerry supporting, it was another example of careerism. Get the scoop. Get better ratings than Fox. We can go through tomorrows Sunday talking heads shows and I'll show you a Repub biased media.
Its not a couple argueing dudes. Its the CNN/FOx/MSNBC/ABC/CBS way. Get 2 conservatives, a moderate and someone slightly to the right of Liebermann and have them go at it. They each pick up their talking points from the RNC blast fax and give minor variations on it. There isn't a sane reasoned political moment on television right now except The Daily Show. America is that fucking weak. Having a press which basically props up opposing view points, points at them and calls it journalism hurts our ability to get information. Having a press which is invested in being nice to the in power white house administration hurts America. Having a press that goes and sits in "Spin Alley" right after the debates and has the Repubs and Dems screaming their talking points, instead of just watching the fucking debates and using google, lexis/nexis and the phone to verify the candidates statements hurts America. The press for the most part in this country sucks ass. So yes, Carlson and Begala are partisan hacks as Jon Stewart said. O'Reilly is a partison hack. Blitzer is a partisan hack.
still provide enough entertainment to get ratings when you are up against people with essentially no journalistic ethics, like Fox News (no offense intended, it's just not journalism, it's pure populist-conservative entertainment most of the time).
I think what we have is competing teams without journalistic ethics. What Jon would propose is having actual dialog with facts instead of blast faxed talking points from the parties. Right now if they have a person who says black you have to get someone to say white. There is no evaluation of competing opinions. Shit, if they had someone on saying shooting kids in schools is bad they'll find some jackass to say it's good. In todays "journalism" merely being an opposing opinion automatically makes it valid. Which is bullshit. Its the new Republican relativism.
Coding is coding is coding. I work as a games programmer, I used to write telecom software. Its about the same except I get to go to better parties and there's a lot more drugs. I like writing code. Whether it's SS7 frontends for voice mail systems or games, I like it. But essentially if you can write good solid code in any area of software engineering, you can write games. As always, writing good solid code is the trick which many people have trouble with. gid-goo
And over seventy percent of them are supporting George W Bush for re-election, because they believe what they're doing is right.
Good job pulling that number out of your Karl Rove's ass. The reality is that 86.4432123456% of the military folks are going to be going for Kerry. I love the strawman of people hating on the soldiers. The large large majority of people have nothing but love for the armed services folks. We just don't like the jackass in charge. Suck it up, we can tell the difference between the folks who are getting paid and the folks who are jacking off to the thought of other peoples kids getting 86ed in the desert. The chicken hawks in the white house can cut Veteran benefits and reduce combat pay while going on TV and saying "bring it on" and "mission accomplished" while at the same time the men and women who trust the commander in chief to take their lives seriously are living in a clusterfuck. Have a nice day.
Ummmm there are over 50 million ps2s out there in the world at large. People may have realized that the xbox was the more powerful, feature-rich system but they bought a ps2. I have one of each (including game cube) so I don't really give a shit about anything but the games. Just finished fable on xbox, now I'm playing sly2 on ps2.
Its pretty incredible. Looking over the cornice in to the crater, the constant sound of rock fall down the sides, the massive dome at the bottom of the crater. A hike definitely well worth it. And in late spring/early summer you can glissade back down!
Because its bullshit. Anyone who can't see a marked constrast between having ANYONE and George Bush in the White House is living in la la land. The Onion had it exactly right when Bush was elected with the headline "At last, our long nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is finally over." While I would rather have someone who more closely represented my own personal views, which are pretty liberal, the people seem to want a lot of red meat and a little policy wrapped up in some more red meat. Too much information and the candidate is a "wonk," too much playing nice and the other guys steamrollers you with illegitimate black babies, spousal drug abuse and secretly funded attack teams which lie about your war record.
That makes you a normal human being. Most people are like that. There are people who are ticket people who just say yes to either Repubs or Dems. But it seems like most people have issues that either side claims as their own. I'm a gun person but I would say on the majority of issues I'm a liberal (not a Democrat). The Democrats are more moderate versions of the Republicans. The DLC or people like Lieberman and Zell Miller are more toward the Republican end of the spectrum and people like the late Paul Wellstone, more toward my end. The point is you vote for the person not the party. Anything else is dogmaticism (is that a word?).
Slashdot Mirror
Try telling that to a company that is releasing simultaneously on multiple platforms (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, maybe PC, maybe Xbox 2 and PSP) in multiple languages (at least North American English, UK English, French, Spanish and German).
They had good ideas but terrible execution. Their games were consistently buggy as hell. Nobody wants to pick up a company that can't produce solid games on schedule that sell a lot of units. C.R.E.A.M.
Also the RPG market is a niche. It's small potatoes for EA. There are really only two consistently performing North American companies doing RPGs - Bethesda and Bioware. Not a lot of room there for underperformers when those two are kicking out great games (although both also have technical issues).
The trick for someone like that is to give everyone the same grade. Say, B+. That way the grade grubbers don't take the class because they can't get a B+. The kids on scholarships don't get screwed. And the people who just want the B+ sign up but never show. So you only get folks who give 2 shits. I took a class with Richard Lewontin and that was his policy for certain classes (maybe all of them, I don't know). It worked pretty well.
That's little dick syndrome. The "real worlders" always think that experience is the only teacher. I'm not a huge fan of the non-degree folks I've worked with. Some are very good. The majority have wacked out egos because they don't have a concept of the field as a whole, just their little piece, which makes them overestimate their knowledge and ability. The ego thing is also because of the inferiority complex they have because they didn't go to school. So they sit around and poo-poo school and all that book learning that the kids have, slap themselves on the back for not going that dead end route.
I've also worked with fresh faced grads that couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. Or have the first job ego: "I produced something that actually works, I'm awesome!" And anyone who uses goto in anything but the most brain dead of situations gets a swift kick in the junk. I don't give a shit who the person is, someone is going to have to read that code, goto generally doesn't help.
In some places royalties are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I'm not sure what kind of royalty deal Rock Star North has but when you're working on a project that generates 2 million sales in a couple weeks there's a lot of money in the potential royalty pot. I imagine Bungie folks are looking forward to some fat checks right now. Whether those are royalty or bonus checks, I don't know. And I've heard good things about the kind of money the GT team gets. But the point is that in some of these places folks are working stupid hours on the assumption that they'll get a big payoff at the end. At EA, I don't know what they hell they're hoping.
The key thing when looking at a game job is to ask around about the crunch, its going to happen but some places are better than others. Folks in the industry usually know the hell holes that suck up college talent and spit out jaded, burnt out husks. Ask about royalties and bonuses. Check out the cars that people drive. Not just the senior people, the mere programmers as well. Look at the numbers for the games the studio has released; have they sold well? How are the reviews? And remember that sometimes an EA is worth it if you get your name on some huge title that sells like crazy. Once you get that first title to your name things get a hell of a lot easier in the industry.
In the console world everyone is going towards having friends, buddies, clan lists that are shared across games. With that comes presence information as well. Don't fear it. Its a good thing.
Nihilist is never going to be shipping Ghost. They were pulled and Swingin Ape is doing it now. Its really Blizzards game. They're just paying another studio to do it.
I'm not sure where you're getting the slashdot aspect of this from but Bungie is not a small developer. They are a 1st party title. Just like Jak and Daxter 3, Ratchet and Clank and Killzone. Microsoft ponied up the dough to make it. While that doesn't make them a massive studio it does make their lives really easy. They don't worry about publishing, marketing (not like they need much) or where the monthly checks are coming from. Plus with the success of Halo they could basically do whatever they wanted. Without Halo their is no XBox.
Game programming is like any other type of programming. It has its challenges but overall its software engineering. "Game developer" is overly broad. The programming side of the house is a technical entity which manages software development. While I love programming and think of it as being creative it is a craft and a discipline.
I see the problem as an inability to get down to doing actual software engineering. Too many people in the industry are talented hacks who get by because they're willing to work all night. They're hacked out solution ends up being a barely working house of cards. The designers show up and want something changed. Since games aren't architected, they're ad-hoc collections of poorly tested code everything takes longer than it should and everyone works stupid hours.
That being said EA sucks. Any game company that doesn't hand out royalties and gives shitty bonuses can kiss my ass. Tiburon is supposedly the worst. Their bonuses are supposed to be absolutely terrible. And, of course, no royalties. Sony is pretty good. Royalties and decent bonuses. So the game does well and the people do well.
No, but they're as credible. Journalism is now a game for career minded folks to kiss, get invited to the cool parties and tv shows and then write about their ins. Someone like Adam Nagourney or Judy Woodruff gets to be a complete hack, basing A1 stories on a few "highly placed anonymous sources" and they're a star. They have to continue to play nice to get the sekrit info. But Sydney Blumenthaul and Sy Hersch get black balled for not pulling their punches. The white house press corps essentially needs to spin things the white house way or they don't get access. The entire industry is screwed.
That's the biggest load of shit. Which Repubs were being treated poorly under Clinton? Oh yeah, none. What you "conservatives" don't get is that Dems don't go around punishing their opponents, they get shit done. That's why under Clinton we had a good economy, we had a reduced deficit despite the right wing plots to take him down. He didn't spend his time getting Gingrich on the no fly list. So I guess the rethug congress also wasted millions of dollars investigating shit that never happened.
But then the point that somehow its easier to port from xbox 2 to mac is bogus. If you have an abstracted API then it is easier to port to PC, PS2/3, gamecube, GBA and also Apples. So what. It is an obvious point. It has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying processor. Plus you still have to have someone worry about doing the underlying work to make the API work on top of DirectWhatever, GameSockets or whatever Apple wants to use, SCE's lib and PS2/3 hardware crap. Screw that. Go where the money is, PS2 and Xbox.
Screw that, go to consoles. Currently that's where its at. PC games are old hat. The last good game I player on PC was Theif and I could have player it on my xbox. So, skip the pc crap and go get one of each console. You save money and end up with a lot more games.
Wow, what a surprise, E5 and up are voting republican. Fuck the privates, lets talk to the officers. Its hard to believe that the majority of those polled supports Bush when, more than half of those polled had never served in Afghanistan or Iraq, had never even done a tour of duty, were officers and were older than 28. I didn't realize that 70% of our military men and women were mid-level enlisted folks but what the hell.
How do you explain 8 years of doggedly attacking Clinton with nothing. Not a fucking spec of evidence. How many millions of dollars did we spend on bogus info? Lisa Meiers sitting on TV and playing bogus out of context quotes from the Clintons? Every talking heads show on TV basically having all conservatives? No Eleanor Clift isn't liberal. She's a spineless moderate who concedes every fucking RNC talking point. I don't actually think the media is biased. I think they're spineless, careerists who are merely interested in blowing huge stories on to the front page. Judith Miller is a perfect example, so is Adam Nagourney. The Repubs are much better at working the media right now. So the media tends to play Repub talking points better. The Dems are working on it but haven't caught up yet. The CBS thing in no way "blatent (sic)" Kerry supporting, it was another example of careerism. Get the scoop. Get better ratings than Fox. We can go through tomorrows Sunday talking heads shows and I'll show you a Repub biased media.
Its not a couple argueing dudes. Its the CNN/FOx/MSNBC/ABC/CBS way. Get 2 conservatives, a moderate and someone slightly to the right of Liebermann and have them go at it. They each pick up their talking points from the RNC blast fax and give minor variations on it. There isn't a sane reasoned political moment on television right now except The Daily Show. America is that fucking weak. Having a press which basically props up opposing view points, points at them and calls it journalism hurts our ability to get information. Having a press which is invested in being nice to the in power white house administration hurts America. Having a press that goes and sits in "Spin Alley" right after the debates and has the Repubs and Dems screaming their talking points, instead of just watching the fucking debates and using google, lexis/nexis and the phone to verify the candidates statements hurts America. The press for the most part in this country sucks ass. So yes, Carlson and Begala are partisan hacks as Jon Stewart said. O'Reilly is a partison hack. Blitzer is a partisan hack.
I think what we have is competing teams without journalistic ethics. What Jon would propose is having actual dialog with facts instead of blast faxed talking points from the parties. Right now if they have a person who says black you have to get someone to say white. There is no evaluation of competing opinions. Shit, if they had someone on saying shooting kids in schools is bad they'll find some jackass to say it's good. In todays "journalism" merely being an opposing opinion automatically makes it valid. Which is bullshit. Its the new Republican relativism.
Coding is coding is coding. I work as a games programmer, I used to write telecom software. Its about the same except I get to go to better parties and there's a lot more drugs. I like writing code. Whether it's SS7 frontends for voice mail systems or games, I like it. But essentially if you can write good solid code in any area of software engineering, you can write games. As always, writing good solid code is the trick which many people have trouble with.
gid-goo
Good job pulling that number out of your Karl Rove's ass. The reality is that 86.4432123456% of the military folks are going to be going for Kerry. I love the strawman of people hating on the soldiers. The large large majority of people have nothing but love for the armed services folks. We just don't like the jackass in charge. Suck it up, we can tell the difference between the folks who are getting paid and the folks who are jacking off to the thought of other peoples kids getting 86ed in the desert. The chicken hawks in the white house can cut Veteran benefits and reduce combat pay while going on TV and saying "bring it on" and "mission accomplished" while at the same time the men and women who trust the commander in chief to take their lives seriously are living in a clusterfuck.
Have a nice day.
Ummmm there are over 50 million ps2s out there in the world at large. People may have realized that the xbox was the more powerful, feature-rich system but they bought a ps2. I have one of each (including game cube) so I don't really give a shit about anything but the games. Just finished fable on xbox, now I'm playing sly2 on ps2.
And Veritas and Intel along with the OSDL folks.
Its pretty incredible. Looking over the cornice in to the crater, the constant sound of rock fall down the sides, the massive dome at the bottom of the crater. A hike definitely well worth it. And in late spring/early summer you can glissade back down!
Because its bullshit. Anyone who can't see a marked constrast between having ANYONE and George Bush in the White House is living in la la land. The Onion had it exactly right when Bush was elected with the headline "At last, our long nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is finally over." While I would rather have someone who more closely represented my own personal views, which are pretty liberal, the people seem to want a lot of red meat and a little policy wrapped up in some more red meat. Too much information and the candidate is a "wonk," too much playing nice and the other guys steamrollers you with illegitimate black babies, spousal drug abuse and secretly funded attack teams which lie about your war record.
That makes you a normal human being. Most people are like that. There are people who are ticket people who just say yes to either Repubs or Dems. But it seems like most people have issues that either side claims as their own. I'm a gun person but I would say on the majority of issues I'm a liberal (not a Democrat). The Democrats are more moderate versions of the Republicans. The DLC or people like Lieberman and Zell Miller are more toward the Republican end of the spectrum and people like the late Paul Wellstone, more toward my end. The point is you vote for the person not the party. Anything else is dogmaticism (is that a word?).
I have done some personal MDMA neurotoxicity experiments which have demonstrated that it gets me incredibly high. And my jaw hurts the next day.