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[Capital Fish]

Hm. Guess you're right. Im just used to most game devs being the kind of people that just look at the people that play their games as dollar signs, not people.

Are you sure you're not thinking of publishers?

[Neonivek]

Hm. Guess you're right. Im just used to most game devs being the kind of people that just look at the people that play their games as dollar signs, not people.

Are you sure you're not thinking of publishers?

I will admit it isn't always the developer's faults that they constantly turn their own games into money gouging inventions.

The current Sims team seems ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE but they are understaffed and overworked by EA with strict rules on what they can and cannot do.

[Capital Fish]

Hm. Guess you're right. Im just used to most game devs being the kind of people that just look at the people that play their games as dollar signs, not people.

Are you sure you're not thinking of publishers?

I will admit it isn't always the developer's faults that they constantly turn their own games into money gouging inventions.

The current Sims team seems ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE but they are understaffed and overworked by EA with strict rules on what they can and cannot do.

I was actually thinking of EA when I typed that. Though there are a few publishers that do have my respect. Mostly smaller ones...

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Hm. Guess you're right. Im just used to most game devs being the kind of people that just look at the people that play their games as dollar signs, not people.

Are you sure you're not thinking of publishers?

I will admit it isn't always the developer's faults that they constantly turn their own games into money gouging inventions.

The current Sims team seems ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE but they are understaffed and overworked by EA with strict rules on what they can and cannot do.

I've out of the loop for about a year or two, so I may be ignorant of what you're talking about, but I have a lot of respect for the Sims team.

Many see them as just cashing in on the same idea repeatedly, but I think that's unfair -- their potential range of gameplay is pretty much everything, and it's a sandbox game, so every expansion is simply a way of growing the base game. The team there has also shown they have some brilliant designers who have done a lot to push the boundaries of what is possible in a Sims game. Many of their experiments, like The Sims Medieval, turn out worse than the base game, but were worthwhile ideas demonstrating bold innovation on the core formula.

For a genre so heavily dominated by a single franchise, without any really notable competition, I think it's impressive just how much The Sims evolves over time. It reminds me of Civilization, which is another genre-dominating franchise that evolves more than competition demands, driven primarily by the desire of its designers to iterate and do better.

[Neonivek]

Their Cash Cowing becomes more obvious Jonafox when you see all the Expansions for The sims 3 they release and how many bugs they still have to fix that they simply do not.

Plus how expencive some of their store items are.

[Scelly9]

I don't completely hate the sims team, but it's a bit ridiculous that they don't bother fixing a totally game-breaking bug for 6 months when the modders did it in about a week.

[Jboy2000000]

Jesus you people get derailed quick. I personally LOVE the Sims. In short, for all the reasons Mr Fox just mentioned, its endless what you can do.

Hm. Guess you're right. Im just used to most game devs being the kind of people that just look at the people that play their games as dollar signs, not people.

Are you sure you're not thinking of publishers?

Either or, they're both the same.

[Capital Fish]

Hm. Guess you're right. Im just used to most game devs being the kind of people that just look at the people that play their games as dollar signs, not people.

Are you sure you're not thinking of publishers?

Either or, they're both the same.

Nonsense!

Developers are artists. They have a vision and they want to share it with the world! They lovingly pour their heart and soul into the best damn computer program the world's ever seen!

Publishers, however, only care about dollar signs. They force developers to make the same dreary FPS year after year. Art, vision, even bugfixes are swept out the door for the sole sake of getting BattleCry to Honor 23 ($149.99 Special Edition!) on the shelves in time for Christmas. Once the hardworking developers are used up, their development studio is shut down and the publishers turn their eyes towards the next big trend. "How quickly can we milk this cash cow to death?" they ask themselves...

See? They're completely different.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This was the funnest post I've ever typed! Strawmen are Awesome!!!

[Jboy2000000]

Hm. Guess you're right. Im just used to most game devs being the kind of people that just look at the people that play their games as dollar signs, not people.

Are you sure you're not thinking of publishers?

Either or, they're both the same.

Nonsense!

Developers are artists. They have a vision and they want to share it with the world! They lovingly pour their heart and soul into the best damn computer program the world's ever seen!

Publishers, however, only care about dollar signs. They force developers to make the same dreary FPS year after year. Art, vision, even bugfixes are swept out the door for the sole sake of getting BattleCry to Honor 23 ($149.99 Special Edition!) on the shelves in time for Christmas. Once the hardworking developers are used up, their development studio is shut down and the publishers turn their eyes towards the next big trend. "How quickly can we milk this cash cow to death?" they ask themselves...

See? They're completely different.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This was the funnest post I've ever typed! Strawmen are Awesome!!!

Its Saturday, stop making me learn! Seriously though, people in the forum have acctually brought new facts to light for twice today. I didn't really expect any serious conversation when I joined Bay12 Forums.

[Capital Fish]

Gah! Don't learn from me! It's wrong! Very wrong! I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Never did! Never will!

I'm just here to make stupid jokes. I never wanted to teach anybody anything... 

EDIT: Unless... You were talking about one of the other posts, weren't you? Yeah! You just quoted my post by accident! When you said people on these forums were making you learn, you were really talking about Fox or Neonivek! They're the smart ones...

You learned from them... 

[Jboy2000000]

Gah! Don't learn from me! It's wrong! Very wrong! I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Never did! Never will!

I'm just here to make stupid jokes. I never wanted to teach anybody anything... 

To bad, yah edumacated mah face!

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Publishers play a key role in the game industry's ecology, and they have a hard job -- if they were afraid to shut down studios, cancel games, and dictate creative choices, developers would walk all over them and the publishers would go out of business as they keep bad games on life support and invest millions into art games that never see a return on investment. Major publishers have to obsess about the bottom line, because otherwise the game industry wouldn't be profitable enough to justify multi-million dollar investments in huge AAA games.

Take the fate of Origin as a case study. Origin made the Wing Commander and Ultima games. It was a great company before it was acquired by EA, and was ruined afterward. But it wasn't EA that ruined them, not directly -- EA gave them lots of money and the freedom to expand and take on more ambitious projects. Origin outgrew their ability to maintain quality control, and they ended up bloating into trainwreck mismanaged projects. EA gave the developers a lot of slack in their leash, and the previously solid company just strangled themselves with it. EA cracked down, ending the slide into ruinous decadence, but the golden age was over and would never come back. Now Origin is an empty shadow of itself, existing just to keep Ultima Online going.

Before digital distribution, there wasn't much of a market for independent game developers to work in, since they had no way to sell and distribute their games, which meant the careful and conservative approach of publishers strangled innovation in the industry. Now that independent game development is blooming, we're seeing that innovation in lower-budget games -- so you get huge budget AAA titles, experimental small budget indie titles, and a big surge in middle market developers and publishers, like Paradox and Stardock. Big publishers like EA are still stifling for those who work with them, but it's for a good cause -- their money grubbing is the reason why less established developers can get AAA blockbuster funding. And now that there are alternative ways to publish games, they can do this without stifling innovation industry-wide.

[Neonivek]

I don't completely hate the sims team, but it's a bit ridiculous that they don't bother fixing a totally game-breaking bug for 6 months when the modders did it in about a week

For your information there are bugs from the original fixed by modders in a week that have YET to be fixed my the Sims team.

But as I said it isn't their fault... EA specifically understaffed them, overworks them, and tells them what they can and cannot do having dirrect influence. They arn't a free studio they are dirrectly controlled by EA.

 

I personally LOVE the Sims. In short, for all the reasons Mr Fox just mentioned, its endless what you can do.

Has nothing to do with that and I love the Sims too (I have all the expansions for 2 AND 3 and most of the first games expansion). It is about them actually giving their game quality control. The amount of bugs and glitches they leave in the game is absolutely dreadful.

If "I" released a game and had that many glitches and I still expected people to buy expansions.... I'd write an appology... which EA would immediately fire me because the development team are NOT allowed to admit mistakes (not joking)

EA gave the developers a lot of slack in their leash, and the previously solid company just strangled themselves with it

Yeah... it was dirrectly EA's fault too. Forcing development onto another game to finish it faster, giving a deadline on a game that had to be scrapped because EA forced development off it, and crashing their budget.

A lot of this "Mismanaged projects" were a dirrect result of EA's tampering and sometimes simply NOT knowing how long and how expencive their games were.

I know that publishers and producers are not evil and sometimes YES they do put the developers in line. I also know that sometimes it is entirely their fault when something goes wrong.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

EA gave the developers a lot of slack in their leash, and the previously solid company just strangled themselves with it

Yeah... it was dirrectly EA's fault too. Forcing development onto another game to finish it faster, giving a deadline on a game that had to be scrapped because EA forced development off it, and crashing their budget.

A lot of this "Mismanaged projects" were a dirrect result of EA's tampering and sometimes simply NOT knowing how long and how expencive their games were.

My example comes from an interview with Richard Garriott that I read many years ago, about the time when he left Origin and founded the short-lived Destination Games. Even after leaving EA, Origin's own founder was of the opinion that Origin's internal decisions are what ruined them, and EA was more than fair with them.

I remember that the interview was in The Escapist; I'll see about digging it up to compare my memory with what he actually said.

[Neonivek]

Ehhh, don't bother it isn't important.

I can't really attribute what I am refering to, to the fall of origin.