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[Sordid]

I dislike that sort of thing in a game that a) costs money, and b) the developer claims is finished. DF is still in alpha and completely free. Plus DF plays a lot better once you learn all the keyboard commands. M&B... not so much, you still have to manually click everything with the mouse.

[Gantolandon]

I don't, and I didn't. All I did was say that I have no need of being lectured about the effects of Communism since I've had the opportunity to see what it'd done to my country.

Well, yeah. It seemed a bit blown out of proportion. I also happen to live in a former communist country and I constantly see people who just seem to be unable not to bring communism into every discussion about economy they can participate. Even if it's completely out of topic. Many of them don't even remember communism except its last few years and several ones of transformation.

I wish there was some kind of Godwin's law just for communism. Of course this would mean Desdichado would lose sutomatically, but at least we wouldn't be having this part of conversation.

What I mean by a proper big game is a game with production values on par with those of the mainstream. Making a 2D platformer or a top-down, 2D RPG, for example, is super easy. Something like GTA or Assassin's Creed, with big, open 3D environments and lots of characters... not so much.

It's not difficult at all in terms of complexity. The main problem is that you need a lot of assets for this. The big companies can throw more money at this problem, so it's quite obvious they will fare better with this kind of games. What's really difficult is creating a decent AI, working world economy or just making the game replayable. Unfortunately, most of big game development companies don't even touch those issues.

If you consider big budget as the main thing that makes the game good, it's not surprising you will always like games developed by big companies more.

I don't think being a 'script fest' is necessarily a bad thing, depends on the genre of the game. M&B in particular is way overdesigned, IMO. When you turn on debugging info, you see that there are tons of stuff going on in the background that don't really impact anything and didn't need to be there. And it also suffers from a serious focus issue. But that's a discussion for another topic, my point is that it's a 'big game' made by an indie company, and boy does it show! It's been, what, three years and one updated re-release since the game supposedly went 'final', and it's still bugged to all hell. That's what I mean when I say that indie games lack polish.

Mount and Blade is still in development. I can't think about an other single player commercial games where new functionalities are added after releasing the product. Second, it's scope is ambitious - you can call this 'overdesigning', but this game would be terribly boring if it were only a series of fights connected with cutscenes.

From what I've heard, development teams actually discuss what their next project is going to be.

Any examples of the big companies where the developer can actually decide what kind of game will he make? Pretending to listen to him is not the same as actually taking his decision into account.

Yep, those are all serious problems. I don't really see what these have to do with the distinction between company and developer in terms of their motivations and the distinction between artist and employee.

It has to do a lot with the main topics of this thread - "why do development companies release such crappy games?" and "is the profit always the main motor of advancement and creativity?". These are examples where the companies, to increase their profit, decrease the quality of their product using ways that are borderline fraud.  Distinction between company and developers is quite meaningful here, as it get rids of arguments such as "they have to do this because otherwise the game developers would starve".

I don't think violating the company's by-laws and getting sacked is a terribly brilliant way of making more money.

You would be surprised. It's quite difficult to pull off as a developer, but still possible. But being a manager gives a lot of opportunity to do nothing at all and still be paid for it - I have an opportunity to watch such an example daily. Still I'm curious about your ethical stance towards this.

[Sowelu]

I'm going to have to jump in on the M&B complaints.  That game has zero polish.  Oblivion gets a lot of hate around here, but I found it about a thousand times more fun than M&B.  Yes, it's a very different game, but...seriously.  Polish.  It makes a game fun.

(It's also why SimCity 4 still beats CitiesXL 2011.  They have different feature-sets, yes, but SC4 has a ton more polish while CitiesXL feels like a jumbled hodgepodge.  Surprisingly enough, SC4 came from a major mature studio, while CitiesXL feels almost like a big-budget indie game!)

[Virtz]

I'm going to have to jump in on the M&B complaints.  That game has zero polish.  Oblivion gets a lot of hate around here, but I found it about a thousand times more fun than M&B.  Yes, it's a very different game, but...seriously.  Polish.  It makes a game fun.

No. I'd rather play a rough prototype with interesting features than the most "polished", forcefully balanced, homogeneous game for everyone.

And Oblivion is actually more buggy than M&B from my experience. Physics going crazy (objects flying through the room at slightest contact, objects falling through solid objects after multiple visits to the given area), AI going apeshit (attacking allies, generally looking remarkably stupid and having serious path-finding issues), horrible performance with 10 NPCs on screen and even crashing to desktop at random.

One thing Oblivion has that M&B doesn't is a community patch that fixes shit never fixed by the developers.

[Vibhor]

I'm going to have to jump in on the M&B complaints.  That game has zero polish.  Oblivion gets a lot of hate around here, but I found it about a thousand times more fun than M&B.  Yes, it's a very different game, but...seriously.  Polish.  It makes a game fun.

Have you played M&B warband?
If not then its your fault that you were playing a prototype.
Warband has better combat system, much better AI, better optimization ( 200 horse archers vs 300 infantry wouldn't lag, even on a shit machine)
Also the game doesn't gives the illusion of freedom, it gives complete full freedom in which you can do anything. Plus warband is actually stable without patches.

[Sordid]

I constantly see people who just seem to be unable not to bring communism into every discussion about economy they can participate. Even if it's completely out of topic. Many of them don't even remember communism except its last few years and several ones of transformation.

Christ, tell me about it. I especially hate people who cling to this idiotic idea that things were somehow better under Communist rule. The Communist party here receives about 15% every election. That means 15% of Czech people have no brains. I can think of no other explanation for that.

It's not difficult at all in terms of complexity. The main problem is that you need a lot of assets for this. The big companies can throw more money at this problem, so it's quite obvious they will fare better with this kind of games. What's really difficult is creating a decent AI, working world economy or just making the game replayable. Unfortunately, most of big game development companies don't even touch those issues.

True, but when they do decide to touch it they can pull it off. Assets take a lot of time, but they're not difficult to do. Complexity is, and the more complex you make a game the more difficult it becomes to polish and balance properly.

If you consider big budget as the main thing that makes the game good, it's not surprising you will always like games developed by big companies more.

Hey, you're talking to someone who's spent about 600 hours on Transformice. I'm not sure that game even has a budget.

Mount and Blade is still in development. I can't think about an other single player commercial games where new functionalities are added after releasing the product. Second, it's scope is ambitious - you can call this 'overdesigning', but this game would be terribly boring if it were only a series of fights connected with cutscenes.

I don't think it's in development. It's been ages since the last patch, and the only new functionality added to Warband by patches that I remember is the ability to invest in some businesses in cities. That's not exactly a major addition.

Any examples of the big companies where the developer can actually decide what kind of game will he make? Pretending to listen to him is not the same as actually taking his decision into account.

Off the top of my head? id Soft. The team wanted to make Doom 3, the management didn't. The team threatened to quit, the management backed down. The recent 20th anniversary video Blizzard made also talks about how they've made enough of a name for themselves for the management to not interfere.

It has to do a lot with the main topics of this thread - "why do development companies release such crappy games?" and "is the profit always the main motor of advancement and creativity?". These are examples where the companies, to increase their profit, decrease the quality of their product using ways that are borderline fraud.  Distinction between company and developers is quite meaningful here, as it get rids of arguments such as "they have to do this because otherwise the game developers would starve".

Well if the company doesn't make games that make money, it won't have money and won't be able to pay its employees. I agree that some companies indulge in this more than they should, but they all have to do it to some degree. That's why I talked about a happy medium as the best that we can hope for.

You would be surprised. It's quite difficult to pull off as a developer, but still possible. But being a manager gives a lot of opportunity to do nothing at all and still be paid for it - I have an opportunity to watch such an example daily. Still I'm curious about your ethical stance towards this.

Having never been in a managerial position myself, I find it quite hard to say. I guess that would depend on what exactly his job is, what state the company is in, etc. Maybe it's like firefighters. When there isn't a fire or some other emergency, they're not exactly busy either, but they're still getting paid for it. Their job is to be there if needed. So if the company's running like clockwork, there may not be anything for the manager to do. Maybe it's like that, like I said, I don't know. Don't have enough information to make an informed judgement.

I'm going to have to jump in on the M&B complaints.  That game has zero polish.  Oblivion gets a lot of hate around here, but I found it about a thousand times more fun than M&B.  Yes, it's a very different game, but...seriously.  Polish.  It makes a game fun.

No. I'd rather play a rough prototype with interesting features than the most "polished", forcefully balanced, homogeneous game for everyone.

I'm with Virtz on this one. Keep in mind that my point was that mainstream games are more polished, I didn't say they're more fun. I don't think that's the same thing. Related, yes, but an unpolished game with a good concept can still be more fun than a polished game with a bad concept.

[Desdichado]

You do realize that without actually providing some examples or some other objective data, your post is basically nothing more than a statement of opinion? I could respond to it simply by posting the same thing with "indie" and "mainstream" swapped to give the opposite view.

I think your perception is skewed because indie games tend to be smaller and simpler than mainstream games, so there are fewer things to go wrong and it's easier to make the game work properly. But every time an indie developer tries to make something big, I see the same result - a buggy, shoddy game. You need not look further than our own beloved DF. Or, in case you would object to that on the grounds that DF is still in alpha stage (a valid point), Mount&Blade.

Funny, I see zero objective data in any of your posts. Asking for things you yourself are unwilling to provide? Shame, shame. As far as Mount and Blade versus Oblivion... fuck, the latter doesn't even have mounted combat... (or spears, or throwing, or open-ended gameplay or...) I guess you played dress-up with dolls as a kid, and as a result really went ga-ga for the pretty horse armor DLC, huh? Vanilla Oblivion is just a giant play-dress-up game.

I mean, most the combat in that game is one-on-one against a crab that auto-leveled with you. If you think Oblivion has more polished gameplay, then clearly you are a martian and further discussion will not result in either side understanding the other.

Indie games smaller and simpler... Yeah, I forgot that a game with mostly one-on-one sword combat against demigod-level rats is more complex than a game with potentially 100 combatants fighting with spears, horses, throwing axes, etc.

You reacted as if he dressed up like Stalin and tried to force you to sing "Communist International". Communism had practically died  more than twenty years ago, you don't have to fight it every time it's mentioned.

I don't, and I didn't. All I did was say that I have no need of being lectured about the effects of Communism since I've had the opportunity to see what it'd done to my country.

What you did was act like an indignant twat because I made a single reference to communism to bolster the point that "free of charge" and "loving craftsmanship" aren't exactly synonymous as you'd been suggesting--and clearly you didn't disagree with the general point of it, either. So instead you have to find another way to "win" the point. Then you blow it up like I was "lecturing" you at length. Your replies have been combative and petulant, mostly devoid of value needing a response. Thus my silence here.

The fact remains that, for every argument saying the companies have reasons for selling-out, you can also argue that long-time fans have reasons for being angry. Going mainstream is not necessary. Independent companies like Paradox and Matrix aren't figuring out how to port EU3 and WitP to Xbox. they aren't starving, and they probably have families.

PS: I live in a country that is still technically communist. So, uh, don't lecture me about how communism has traumatized you... or whatever, I don't really care what you say. Power was off for 16 hours today. No joke.

[Sordid]

Y'know... I'm not going to grace that with a response, on account of the fact that there are almost more logical fallacies in that than sentences and I just can't be bothered. Good day to you.

[Desdichado]

Y'know... I'm not going to grace that with a response, on account of the fact that there are almost more logical fallacies in that than sentences and I just can't be bothered. Good day to you.

Pretty clear that I was done with you, but I guess you gotta try that last gambit to WIN the internet, huh?

[freeformschooler]

Y'know... I'm not going to grace that with a response, on account of the fact that there are almost more logical fallacies in that than sentences and I just can't be bothered. Good day to you.

Y'know... I'm not going to grace that with a response, on account of the fact that there are almost more logical fallacies in that than sentences and I just can't be bothered. Good day to you.

Pretty clear that I was done with you, but I guess you gotta try that last gambit to WIN the internet, huh?

Boy, it's like a grill in here.

[Soadreqm]

I wish there was some kind of Godwin's law just for communism.

You know who else used laws to stop discussions? Hitler.



I think the possible correlation between having a huge budget and polish sounds pretty interesting. It could be more a matter of indie developers being more prone to biting more than they can chew. Big companies are more careful. Less likely to experiment with interesting new ideas. And the more complicated your game is, the less effort points you have to allocate for polishing. Big companies don't produce any more polished products when they're doing something big and grandiose, like an epic open-world RPG, but first-person shooters and such usually have a feature list you could print on the box. When indie devs actually use their budget of "eight years spent toiling away in mom's basement" into making something simple, like a side-scrolling platformer, you get some pretty damn polished results. Compare Cave Story and Dwarf Fortress. Or Portal and Morrowind.

[freeformschooler]

I wish there was some kind of Godwin's law just for communism.

You know who else used laws to stop discussions? Hitler.



I think the possible correlation between having a huge budget and polish sounds pretty interesting. It could be more a matter of indie developers being more prone to biting more than they can chew. Big companies are more careful. Less likely to experiment with interesting new ideas. And the more complicated your game is, the less effort points you have to allocate for polishing. Big companies don't produce any more polished products when they're doing something big and grandiose, like an epic open-world RPG, but first-person shooters and such usually have a feature list you could print on the box. When indie devs actually use their budget of "eight years spent toiling away in mom's basement" into making something simple, like a side-scrolling platformer, you get some pretty damn polished results. Compare Cave Story and Dwarf Fortress. Or Portal and Morrowind.

I'm glad you ended your argument with "Cave Story". The budget for that was apparently "five years to waste" and the finished product had a polish level of perhaps a high [money] budget commercial game. Maybe more. But then again, if Cave Story was a 3D game with realistic graphics, perhaps even more time would have to have been spent on it.

[SalmonGod]

I'll second (third?) that Oblivion had both way more shallow gameplay and more bugs/broken features/lazy game design than M&B. 

Much the same as Assassin's Creed or GTA, it gives a solid impression of open-world gameplay, but is not actually designed to be played as such.  They also tried to do some interesting things with their rpg game mechanics, such as skill practice & decay through use or under-use, but they didn't put any effort at all into balancing or mitigating the negative aspects of those features. 

Fallout 3 took much of the same direction and improved on some aspects, removed others, and ended up with much the same crap... cool ideas that ended up hurting the game because they didn't develop them enough. 

It seems like with every new product they raise hype by inventing cool features, but then they think those features through only halfway and expect their budget to gloss that fact over... which, sadly, works for the majority of gamers.  I know tons of people who think Fallout 3 is the best thing ever.  Personally, I can't stand it, because I've played other games that have less polish from budget, but much more thoroughly developed gameplay. 

We seem to have very different tolerances for one versus the other.  I can tolerate some clunky interface, non-game breaking bugs, or graphics that leave touching up to the fan base.  In fact, they sometimes add to the charm of a game for me, much the same as a crack in a singer's voice kept in a studio recording can bring a human element to an otherwise highly engineered product.  What I cannot stand, however, is being presented with progressive features such as a skill-based rpg system where skills grow or decay based on frequency of use, yet no effort at all is put into addressing the obvious side-effects such as encouraging the player to bunny hop constantly everywhere they go to keep their jumping skill at maximum.  Or taking the Fallout franchise into first-person and including the VATS system to stay true to the turn-based rpg roots of the game, but doing absolutely nothing to smooth the break in pacing or balance it so that it doesn't make the game brokenly easy when used properly but the FPS gameplay so clumsy by comparison as to make the game near impossible if you refuse to use it.  Or in GTA or Assassin's Creed making gigantic detailed settings with a great superficial impression of life to them, but giving the player nothing to do outside of the core plot besides enacting rampant violence, the evidence of which disappears as soon as you turn a street corner.

Now compare with the economy topic we mentioned before in M&B.  What you find to be an overdesigned or superfluous feature, I actually find to be a great method of self-balancing a dynamic system in a way that is consistent with the continuity of the world.  For example, I found one city a while back with ridiculously low prices on salt, and another city less than two day's travel away that bought it for a little above standard price.  I could make $300-400 profit on every bag... the first time.  I ran that route 5 or 6 times, and the profits dropped every time until prices almost totally equalized and it wasn't worth it anymore.  I've gone back a couple times, and find it still hasn't gone back to the extreme price difference it was before.  I sucked one market dry of salt and saturated another.  It will be a while before I can abuse that route again.  If this aspect of the game hadn't been so overdeveloped, that discovery would have basically been an "Oh look.  I beat the game." moment for me, and I would have lost interest in playing.  I can almost guarantee that if M&B were developed by a major corporate studio that's how it would have been, too.

Of course, this is similar to the concept of planned obsolescence in other industries.  If a game's gameplay is too well-balanced/interesting/self-sustaining, then the customer is likely to grow attached and sink tons of time into that game, which ultimately means they're probably going to buy less games overall.  It's much more sensible business to make a game that can be completed, and leaves little more to do after completion other than go out and buy the sequel.

[Sordid]

Pretty clear that I was done with you, but I guess you gotta try that last gambit to WIN the internet, huh?

Strange definition of "done" you've got there, mate.

Now compare with the economy topic we mentioned before in M&B.  What you find to be an overdesigned or superfluous feature, I actually find to be a great method of self-balancing a dynamic system in a way that is consistent with the continuity of the world.  For example, I found one city a while back with ridiculously low prices on salt, and another city less than two day's travel away that bought it for a little above standard price.  I could make $300-400 profit on every bag... the first time.  I ran that route 5 or 6 times, and the profits dropped every time until prices almost totally equalized and it wasn't worth it anymore.  I've gone back a couple times, and find it still hasn't gone back to the extreme price difference it was before.  I sucked one market dry of salt and saturated another.  It will be a while before I can abuse that route again.  If this aspect of the game hadn't been so overdeveloped, that discovery would have basically been an "Oh look.  I beat the game." moment for me, and I would have lost interest in playing.  I can almost guarantee that if M&B were developed by a major corporate studio that's how it would have been, too.

That's a good point, but there are two problems with it: First, that's how it's supposed to work, but very often it just doesn't. As I said previously, I've had many, many cases of a town absolutely packed with a certain type of goods but with the price still high. The second problem is that the economy is there more or less for its own sake, it doesn't tie into anything else. Trade supposedly influences the prosperity of settlements, which in turn affect the amount of money that settlement is then able to produce in taxes, right? Except as a player you have tons of ways to make money other than trading and collecting taxes, like investing in businesses, selling loot and slaves, raiding enemy villages, etc. As a result, you don't really care whether a town is prosperous or has just been looted, and even if you did care there's not really anything you can do about it. The effect on the player is minimal, and the effect on AI lords is completely nil since they seem to have unlimited funds and the ability to conjure troops out of thin air anyway.

[Gantolandon]

True, but when they do decide to touch it they can pull it off.

I can give you several examples of a polished, complex indie game (Matrix Games tend to release those). Unless you can give me an example of a mainstream game with the level of complication of "Distant Worlds" (as in - working AI doing micromanagement for you), it will be hard to convince me.

I don't think it's in development. It's been ages since the last patch, and the only new functionality added to Warband by patches that I remember is the ability to invest in some businesses in cities. That's not exactly a major addition.

It's still more then you can expect from most games. Usually after releasing the game only bugfixes follow. Also, there were making some big changes in AI and game balance.

Off the top of my head? id Soft. The team wanted to make Doom 3, the management didn't. The team threatened to quit, the management backed down. The recent 20th anniversary video Blizzard made also talks about how they've made enough of a name for themselves for the management to not interfere.

In your last post you made it sound that it is common for developers to actively make decisions during making the game. Is this your best example? Company where some of the employees practically are living legends of the game development world and they still had to threaten the management with quitting to make their point?

Well if the company doesn't make games that make money, it won't have money and won't be able to pay its employees. I agree that some companies indulge in this more than they should, but they all have to do it to some degree. That's why I talked about a happy medium as the best that we can hope for.

Well, I agree with this partially - when a company becomes larger, it needs more and more money to even maintain its structure. So its road to become evil corporation is pretty much inevitable. Still - we as players don't have to like it or even accept it. Hence numerous rants.

Having never been in a managerial position myself, I find it quite hard to say. I guess that would depend on what exactly his job is, what state the company is in, etc. Maybe it's like firefighters. When there isn't a fire or some other emergency, they're not exactly busy either, but they're still getting paid for it. Their job is to be there if needed..

Not exactly. Their job is to direct employees and this is something they have to do every day. The problem is that if an incompetent moron is somewhere high in the company's ladder, there isn't much that anyone can do unless he does something really outrageous. But I have seen very good managers too - it's a shame they usually end up doing twice as much as they should, because they have also to deal with the damages done by the incompetent ones.

The effect on the player is minimal, and the effect on AI lords is completely nil since they seem to have unlimited funds and the ability to conjure troops out of thin air anyway.

It's not true anymore. Since one of the more recent patches they actually have to gather their troops from the villages, I heard.