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[Bdthemag]

My expectations for this game are incredibly low. I mean a lot of the screenshots look pretty crappy and look like they were directly based off of DayZ, even if this game wasn't intended to be based off of DayZ and everything looking similar was a mere coincidence I still doubt this game would do well.

[x2yzh9]

Well, all I can say at this point is we'll see. If the game's great, then it's great. If it's bad, it's bad. You can keep your expectations low but I will keep mine high and optimistic.

And as to the language argument..I don't think it really matters. The game could be named 'goobop the gooses hell' and if it played like a game that was worth the money that it costed then well, I'd be glad to pay for it.

I'll probably update the thread when the gameplay video releases, but for now I'm just going to try to stay out of this thread for the time being.

[Girlinhat]

I will enjoy watching this.  I'm going to be rolling up my pants, a shit storm is coming in.  And we're predicting at least six inches of shitfall.  hope you have flash-shit insurance!

Really though, just taking a look at things.  First of all there's Big Rigs.  Defendants may claim "but it's not all the same people" but let's be honest, if it's got ANY of the same people, it's off to a bad start.  Just looking at a few gameplay videos of Big Rigs, it's got... well, everything wrong.  If NONE of the crew ever stopped and said "Hey, maybe we could add a limit to your speed." or "Maybe we shouldn't let you drive up mountains" then this proves that every single one of them is incompetent at game design.  I'm not just exaggerating here.  This is, like...  You cannot actually mess up that bad.  You have to intentionally make your game poorly, if you're going to go that far wrong.  No actual game designer would look at that and say "Yes, I like this enough to sell it."  I mean, I'm trying to make a comparison to what that would be like, but I can't find anything.  Bottom line is, any single person who was involved in producing, programming, or marketing for Big Rigs has a large mark against them, as it proves they care nothing for making a good game.

And don't say "but that was a different game."  Yeah, it was different, but it's about reputation.  If your reputation has been sullied by a poor game, people are reluctant to go for your next one.  If anyone from Big Rig is on the War Z team, then their reputation takes a nose-dive.

Now, for what (little) I've seen of the actual game.  First thoughts are really "so what, it's a shooter."  Which is nice and all, but if I want that then I'll go play CoD on my brother's PS3.  There's some screenshots up, and they look theatrically nice, but they aren't very conductive to a good experience.  Closeups, dramatic shots, big explosions, meh.  That tells you nothing about how the game plays.  It shows some close-fighting and some FPS experience, but any good zombie survival is about long-term survival.  If it's about short-term arena mode, then it doesn't have to be zombies at all, it can be nazis, russians, mutants, aliens, or dolphins, so long as they come in waves.  What sets the zombie genre apart is the survival of supplies, and finding food, water, and shelter.  In that regard I have very low hopes.  It's likely going to be players set up on a hill shooting approaching zombies, with little to no worry about long-term care.

They even support this in the FAQ.  They tell you right out "Any player joining the game will have the same crafting abilities and survival expectations of anyone else.  We don't muddle with things like character levels or pointless skill points."  This pretty much tells you right away that your character is disposable and that you're probably going to be dying a lot, but that's ok because death isn't a big deal.  After all, you're not losing any levels or experience.  You'll just be losing the gun in your hand right now, but in a few minutes you'll respawn and you'll get a brand new gun.  This further supports the idea that long-term care won't be an issue, and that it's just going to be a deathmatch.

Then there's something that caught my eye.  The system requirements are "2GB of RAM and be capable of running such-and-such Shader 3.0"  Looking at the screenshots, those are some fairly solid graphics.  Not the best, but they're very solid and they're nice to look at.  Graphics will consume ungodly computer power from everywhere, the graphics card, the RAM, the CPU, everything!  I'm inclined to think that the media page doesn't actually show any gameplay images at all, but instead shows some teaser art or concept art.

Oh, and my favorite part - players can host their own servers.  I'll just say that and leave it there, in case anyone else didn't notice it.

Low expectations, but I'll be watching.  I've been surprised by lesser things in the past, I'd hop in if it looks good, but right now I'm waiting on gameplay footage provided by non-developer players before I even pretend to think better about it.

[G-Flex]

Hey, G-Flex, check the logo.

What about it?

Goose hell? I'd play it. Feather buggers have had it coming to them for a long time now.

Agreed. Geese are total assholes.

If NONE of the crew ever stopped and said "Hey, maybe we could add a limit to your speed." or "Maybe we shouldn't let you drive up mountains" then this proves that every single one of them is incompetent at game design.  I'm not just exaggerating here.  This is, like...  You cannot actually mess up that bad.

I have to disagree with this, though. A low-level employee, or team member with little influence over the project, could easily know fully well how fucked-up things are going and be essentially powerless to stop it or cause things to go in a better direction, just like with anything else at any other company.

I have no idea what happened with Big Rigs specifically; it makes no goddamn sense to me at all that that game could have been released. There's definitely a story there, and I don't know what it is.

They even support this in the FAQ.  They tell you right out "Any player joining the game will have the same crafting abilities and survival expectations of anyone else.  We don't muddle with things like character levels or pointless skill points."

Wait, what? The front page specifically states:

Gain experience and spend it to learn dozens of available skills in this Zombie Game.

Are they flatly contradicting themselves here or what?

EDIT: I can't find that quote you used from the FAQ. I looked through the whole FAQ and it's not there. What gives?

[Shadowscales]

I like it how they say "First Zombie MMO".

[Bdthemag]

Oh hey, I found a picture relevant to the discussion.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[fenrif]

I thought the title was a play on words? The War Z -> The WarZ -> The Wars. Also "The War Z" isn't really broken english. Aside from the fact that English (and all language in general) is extremely malleable, titles especially are something that you get a lot of artistic license with. Video game titles on the whole are riddled with deliberatly misspelled words, made up words, etc. But that's ok because a title doesn't have to follow any rules.

It's like getting mad that "eXistenZ" wasn't called "Existence." Also DayZ is broken english too, by your logic. It should be Day Z, or Days. As it's written the mod should be called "daze." At least The War Z is readable as what it says.

There's a difference between intentionally fiddling with the language for some kind of effect and just plain doing it wrong by accident in a way that sounds horribly awkward. If I call a game "Battles-Field 2: A Force Specials" instead of "Battlefield 2: Special Forces", I don't get to say "but English is malleable and it's a title of something!" and expect to get away with it.

And if they wanted "War Z" to be a pun on "wars", they would have made it one word. It's not like that hasn't been done before.

I notice you didn't respond to how DayZ as a title is just as "wrong" as The War Z.

You're confusing something being objectively bad with you not liking something. Also Language is malleable. There's nothing to "get away with" here. The only difference between Battles-Field 2: A Force Specials and Battlefield 2: Special forces, as titles, is your subjective taste. Both are equally valid titles preciseley because titles don't have any standardised rules of grammar or spelling. That's why you see newspapers that favour alliteration over grammatical sense in their headlines. That's why you get album titles with terrible spelling, or that use symbols in place of letters. The title of a video game isn't an academic paper, it's an extension of the artistic expression of that game. You can't point to something artistic and say.

Shakespeare invented something like 1700 words. Most of these he did by using nouns as verbs, combining words together in new ways, and adding prefixes and suffixes. Namely exactly what you hold up as an example of how you can't use the language and "get away with it."

[G-Flex]

I notice you didn't respond to how DayZ as a title is just as "wrong" as The War Z.

You're confusing something being objectively bad with you not liking something. Also Language is malleable. There's nothing to "get away with" here. The only difference between Battles-Field 2: A Force Specials and Battlefield 2: Special forces, as titles, is your subjective taste.

So you're saying that, in language, when writing a title, it's literally impossible to mess it up, even by one's own standards. Fantastic.

This may surprise you, but a lot of things are the result of simple translation errors or misunderstandings in how a given language works.

Yes, I understand that language is malleable, neologisms exist, and people get incredibly clever when it comes to naming things. I know that language changes and that linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. I get that. This does not mean that it's impossible to make an error when translating a title to English or otherwise writing a title in a language you do not speak natively. There is a big difference between accidentally translating a title in a weird/awkward/incorrect way, and being Shakespeare. There's a difference between intentionally and knowingly being creative with the language (in which case you know which rules you're breaking and are doing so for some particular reason), and just plain cocking it up and breaking those rules by accident.


Back to less godawfully annoying matters:

I couldn't find that quote in the FAQ, but I did find this one:

There are no character levels or unrealistic stats, skills or abilities to learn and new players just joining the game will be on almost the same level playing field as a player that has been playing for a month.

So it seems like the people writing the copy for the website are in disagreement about how the game actually works, including important aspects of its design philosophy. Fantastic.

[Rex_Nex]

I notice you didn't respond to how DayZ as a title is just as "wrong" as The War Z.

The War Z just sounds damn disgusting as a title. DayZ does not. Why is this even an argument here... does War Z really feel like the right way to say it to you?

[x2yzh9]

I notice you didn't respond to how DayZ as a title is just as "wrong" as The War Z.

The War Z just sounds damn disgusting as a title. DayZ does not. Why is this even an argument here... does War Z really feel like the right way to say it to you?

I'm just gonna pop in quick here and let my opinion be known, I'd have to agree with fenrif, if your arguing about the fucking title of the game then yes, DayZ sounds pretty bad as a title too if you want to nitpick.

[Levi]

I notice you didn't respond to how DayZ as a title is just as "wrong" as The War Z.

The War Z just sounds damn disgusting as a title. DayZ does not. Why is this even an argument here... does War Z really feel like the right way to say it to you?

DayZ is pretty bad if you start hearing it as Daisy.

[Girlinhat]

Cannot Unsee.

[fenrif]

Daisy, Daze, Days, Day Z! Phew, got there in the end!

The War Z! Hey that only took one try... Yeah DayZ is definatly a perfect title and The War Z is a travesty of bad translation.

I notice you didn't respond to how DayZ as a title is just as "wrong" as The War Z.

You're confusing something being objectively bad with you not liking something. Also Language is malleable. There's nothing to "get away with" here. The only difference between Battles-Field 2: A Force Specials and Battlefield 2: Special forces, as titles, is your subjective taste.

So you're saying that, in language, when writing a title, it's literally impossible to mess it up, even by one's own standards. Fantastic.

This may surprise you, but a lot of things are the result of simple translation errors or misunderstandings in how a given language works.

Yes, I understand that language is malleable, neologisms exist, and people get incredibly clever when it comes to naming things. I know that language changes and that linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. I get that. This does not mean that it's impossible to make an error when translating a title to English or otherwise writing a title in a language you do not speak natively. There is a big difference between accidentally translating a title in a weird/awkward/incorrect way, and being Shakespeare. There's a difference between intentionally and knowingly being creative with the language (in which case you know which rules you're breaking and are doing so for some particular reason), and just plain cocking it up and breaking those rules by accident.

Yes, im saying that it's literally impossible to mess up a proper noun, though I don't know what you mean by ones own standards? Are The War Z devs unhappy with the name? You seem to have assumed they've mistranslated it, which I would love to see some sort of evidence of aside from your personal dislike from the name.

If a 3 year old mashes words together and comes up with "hobnob" is that any less valid than Shakespeare coming up with it? Are you suggesting that it's literally impossible for someone who isn't a genius savant to play around with words when naming their creative work? (hyperbole is fun isn't it? ). The only difference between intentionally coming up with DayZ because you want a title that is ambiguous and has many meanings and unintentionally coming up with it because you didn't think the punctuation and formatting through enough is so completely insignificant that it's basically meaningless.

And for another movie example (remember eXistenZ?): "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." A cinematic classic. With, according to you, a broken-english title. Fuck you Kubric, learn to grammar!


Anyway, I'm still optemistic about this game. It's kind of disheartening that the devs were involved in Big Rigs but to be honest I'm still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Gilliam made The Brothers Grimm (Hey that's kinda like The War Z in it's formatting, bad Gilliam!) Spielberg made Indy and the Fridge Nuke.

[G-Flex]

I don't really know what's so hard to understand about what I'm saying.

There is a difference between being creative with language on purpose, toward some specific end, and simply making an accident while translating something, or writing something in a language with which you aren't very familiar. These are two different things. It's the same as intentionally painting someone a little abstractly, and accidentally giving them extra muscles because you don't know how anatomy works. Yes, you can do anything in a title and it is, technically, valid, in the sense that it's your proper noun and you can do whatever the hell you want. However, there is still a difference between bending the rules on purpose to be creative in some way and bending the rules accidentally because you don't know what they are. There is a difference between e.g. an intentional twist on a phrase and a translation error. This isn't a hard concept to understand. You can still like a title whether it is what it is on purpose or by accident, but you can also still dislike it on certain grounds, and one perfectly valid angle of criticism is that a title sounds like awkward English without actually being significantly clever. Intentional or not, I'm going to criticize a title for bending English in a way that doesn't actually accomplish anything.

At any rate, this wasn't even so much about the title itself. I was more commenting on how I become a little more skeptical of a game when its creators don't seem to put a lot of care into things, and translation/localization is one of those things. It's definitely happened in other things that are good, but that's why I say I'm skeptical, not that I assume it's going to be bad.

[The Mechanical Man]

I can't believe I'm chiming in on this issue, but... here I am.


I personally don't like the title "The War Z" simply because of the awkward existence of the word "the". If it was just War Z, I would like it better. And if DayZ was actually The DayZ, then I wouldn't like that title. I don't like the "the", and that's that.