Chahk Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Originally posted by Decepticon um, dude? the game was mainly delayed due to , i dont know, maybe a little thing like THE SOURCE CODE BEING STOLEN????? Visit the Steam forums from time to time, it will open your eyes. Valve employees openly admited that HL2 wasn't going to be ready by its original release date. They themselves said that even if the source code wasn't stolen, the game would still get delayed. Have you tried the leaked alpha? It only proved the fact that HL2 was not playable this close to the release date. Anyways, back to topic (kind of). Originally posted by Decepticon lucas arts doesnt just say "hey this is the release date, you have until then" But that is EXACTLY what happens most of the time! The publishers would rather rush an unfinished product out the door (and patch it later) than postpone the release dates. Originally posted by Decepticon pandemic would have known when the release date was due. they wouldve had months and months to get their stuff together. if they didnt think they could handle the release date, then they couldve said so to lucasarts long before they(lucas) decided on a release date. Developers don't get a vote. They can scream on top of their lungs about software being unfinished, but when the publisher says "release" - they don't have a choice. Originally posted by Decepticon lucas was a movie maker and should stick to making movies. i dont think lucasarts should have anything to do with any starwars games ever again lol Amen to that! Although after Episodes 1 and 2 many would argue that he should stay away from making movies as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SITH_ShadowCat Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 I know the game has its flaws, but its not as unfinished as you all say. I mean, look at Enter the Matrix. Its rough around the edges, but the core is solid. Pandemic played some of there cards right on this one. LucasArts could have been the complete end of this game if it was a lesser developer, but Pandemic figured a way to get the very important issues ironed out and keep the smaller issues to a patch, becuase there was no time to get em fixed in the first place. Again, I know the game has its flaws but there not on a large scale that the whole game is going to go down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rut-wa jodar Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Originally posted by Decepticon well my theory is, lucas was a movie maker and should stick to making movies. i dont think lucasarts should have anything to do with any starwars games ever again lol You are living proof that snow white had sex with dopey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knunchucksammy Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Originally posted by Decepticon and you called warcraft 3 finished? in actual fact, most games which are released on any platform, pc or console, are done so because the developers have finished them. do you think they thought a cpl of years ago, "oh, this game bf1942 is pretty cool , but its not quite finished yet, lets release it anyway!!!" it doesnt happen that way. each game is released when the developers interpretation of finished is completed. wether that be a rushed out deadline so be it. if anything is left out, it is because they forgot to include it in the final build or they just didnt anticipate something. or in rare cases, the publisher rushed them. with todays standards, alot of the things left out of swb can be pretty much unforgiveable. i heard the ps2 version is being patched. now if a game is so glitchy that it has to release patches for the consoles, doesnt that tell you the game was nowhere near ready? im sorry this is unacceptable. game developers are more and more getting lazier, relying on the stupidity of gamers, as it is becoming more of a common practice to release a buggy game. Sorry mang but you are wayyyy off.... Back Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decepticon Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 i am way off. ok. glad you specified what i was way off about thanks. your point really tocuhed alot of people out there i am sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
=HR=Meltdown Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Sorry to say it's all in the publisher's hands NOT the devs. I've worked in that type of field before, and trust me the devs just do the best they possibly can with the time they are given, but the publisher gives the FINAL date. And not everything is perfect anymore with Blizzard games on release for good reason, they were bought out. Previously they would just take the money the earned from a game and pour it back into the company enabling them to develop it as long as it took to get it as good as possible at release. HOWEVER, now that they have been bought out (by Vivendi if I remember right) they are being pushed to get them out sooner because THEY are the reason the parent company stays in the black. Vivendi published losses the last 3 quarters of the fiscal year, end result they are forcing Blizzard to push out WoW before it is ready in Nov/Dec so they can show a profit before the end of the year and get their stock up as WoW is the only hope they have. Look at it this way, power company I once worked for gets bought out by another company that is into coal mining. Power company charged reasonable rates at first after deregulation; however, the prices have started to rise sharply NOT because it costs anymore to generate electricity, but rather because the company who bought them out is taking the money from them in order to make their coal mining industry look like it is being profitable (which is completely legal). End result is robbing Peter to pay Paul, both of whom are brothers. And that's the way game publishing works, Lucasfilm needs more income for him to finish up EPIII, so they release the trilogy on DVD and force out the games on the same day to make a monster intake on release and get the money together to finish it up (which they did, $115 mil in one day). Again robbing Peter (or in our case Lucas Arts via the custoemrs) by forcing the devs to get it out, to pay Paul (LucasFilm). It's the way ALL corporate business works, get used to it and don't blame the devs, they are just trying to do what they love, and treat the customers the best they can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decepticon Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Originally posted by Decepticon each game is released when the developers interpretation of finished is completed. wether that be a rushed out deadline so be it. if anything is left out, it is because they forgot to include it in the final build or they just didnt anticipate something. or in rare cases, the publisher rushed them. i didnt say it was ALL in the developers hands. you are wrong if you think every publisher rules the devs with iron fists. what, you honestly dont think there are partnerships out there where the publishers give the devs time to do what they want? look at doom3 mate. in some cases though , and this looks to be one of those cases, the publishers did rush the devs into finishing. but if the devs knew of the date many months ago, im sure lucas arts just didnt say to pandemic "hey guy's, i dont care where u are up to, we want a release by next week". so really i blame pandemic sorry. lucas arts had high expectations from them and they only just managed to deliver. pandemic wouldve had time to work out what would and wouldnt be included. also the publisher wouldnt just release whatever the devs had finished. i am sure if the game was far from a finished playable build, the publishers wouldnt dare release it. though the devs would want to give them something or else they dont get paid.....(which is probably where the main problem lies) i am positive the publishers would have a meeting every week or so to see where the status of the game is leading up to the final weeks. and yeah they(lucas arts) most likely pushed prodded and pestered the devs, but in the end, the paycheck comes from one place. so lucasarts has the right to push them. considering both parties usually come to an agreement in early stages of when a rough gamerelease date might be. and they sign papers. lots of papers. if pandemic didnt think they could bring a game out by this time, they shouldnt have signed the papers with lucas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
=HR=Meltdown Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 In the case of Doom3 the publisher wasn't paying for development, ID was paying for it themselves and bankrolling the majority of the proceeds from the sales. In this case LA was paying for most all of the development (salaries, computers, etc), and in that position, yes the publisher rules with an iron fist, for it is them who have to make the money back from development, not the development house themselves. And they did bring the game out in time, a good game. Will everyone be satisfied? No, but then some are not even satisfied with anything less than the holy grail of gaming everytime out. Amazingly enough, I'm sure somewhere in the world, way back when, someone was pissed when Pong game out at the "shoddy" gameplay, in the '70s. But surely, being in the professional game development field you yourself would realise that. And I highly doubt you could do any better, I mean seriously name one game you've helped develop, create or program and I am sure we'd find some people pissed off about something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decepticon Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 i dont develop computer games mate. i merely help with the technical support for many different titles from other companies. there are other parts of ea australia though which deal with game developement, i am not on that team. i work closely though to where they print the manuals and packaging (cpl offices over) and the distribution centre is on the same road. there is millions of games there. well maybe not that many. but anyway, companies like lucasarts and novalogic and many other publishers do not have base of operations big enough in australia so they hire EA to do most of the work for them. i know off the top of my head one of the other major third party companies in australia which never need our help, and that is Activision. We consider them to be our rivals, but do not think of them as a threat lol. um and as for my game ideas? ive tried to keep them mostly to myself over the years, as i am a bit of a writer myself. i give the gc devs ideas for their mod now and then, not that they listen lol. though i was once a movie director for a mod which never came to fruition. it was going to be called Eastern Front for call of duty. now i just make gameplay movies in my spare time, mostly of the galacticconquest mod for bf1942. i even named my production company "galactiCinema" and now have my very own machinima series called "Dark Rebellion", with 2 episodes out there. its pretty funny. whats machinima you ask? you heard of "red vs blue" the halo series? well they inspired me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
=HR=Meltdown Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Ok ok ok.... let me get this straight.... You just work technical support for EA, yet you say "I work in the field and have some knowledge of it"? OK ok not to be mean, but you seriously have zero clue how things work obviously in corporate America. Things aren't nearly that clean cut and simple to understand, I know, I've been both places, things aren't nearly that simple..... And yes I used to be just like you are in terms of "Why the hell do we have to put up with this when it could be so much better". Then I got into upper management, and when you're working 60-80 hour weeks, having to spend at least half that time havign to fight with other departments and business groups to do their part so you can get your part done, and not being able to do anything about it because that dept's manager is your bosses best friend, you realise quickly that you simply have to do the best you can with what you have, or you go insane and become someone NO ONE likes working with, and minus one paying job. Someday maybe you'll get up there and see what I mean, but until you have milestones hanging over your head and other departments refusing to work with you because they have different priorities than you you will never truly understand it. And like I said that is not meant harshly, but I hardly think a tech support person that simply has the requisit 3 weeks of training required to do that job knows truly how things work in the grand scheme of things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDKnite188 Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Good discussion, people. Btw for anyone who has done any intermediate to professional level programming, debugging is the worst part of the process. Countless hours are spent in fixing seemingly small errors. Time is of the essence. Sadly, devs seem to lose it quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decepticon Posted September 25, 2004 Share Posted September 25, 2004 i love you guys!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chahk Posted September 25, 2004 Share Posted September 25, 2004 Originally posted by Decepticon i love you guys!!! You're still not getting our BudLight, dude! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigWyrm Posted September 25, 2004 Share Posted September 25, 2004 Originally posted by Decepticon do you think they thought a cpl of years ago, "oh, this game bf1942 is pretty cool , but its not quite finished yet, lets release it anyway!!!" it doesnt happen that way. each game is released when the developers interpretation of finished is completed. wether that be a rushed out deadline so be it. if anything is left out, it is because they forgot to include it in the final build or they just didnt anticipate something. or in rare cases, the publisher rushed them. As a matter of fact, that is EXACTLY what EA and Dice did with BF1942. I was a beta-tester for that game for three months and every time they fixed something, something else got screwed up. The final version was full of bugs when it was released. In fact, there was a patch for the game BEFORE it was released. That is an acknowledgement of the problems that it had. It took over a year before the game was really up to standards. You are living in a fantasy world because the standard for pc games is to release them early and patch them quickly. In most cases, the publisher rushes the creators, not the other way around. I am in no way making excuses for them, just stating the facts. Oh, and FYI, I talked to a LucasArts PR rep and they said that they are working on a fix for the XBOX server browser. Also, joining a game using the 'friends' link works every time for me. I was told that for the XBOX version, your best bet is to use the quickmatch or join by linking with a friend. I have been able to join games using optimatch, but it usually takes at least 15 minutes and several frustrating tries before I do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zmidponk Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 You are living in a fantasy world because the standard for pc games is to release them early and patch them quickly. Not to this degree. It happened with Battlefield 1942. It happened with Battlefield: Vietnam (though they have begun fixing them). It happened appalingly severely with Star Wars: Battlefront. On the vast majority of the rest the games I have played, this did not happen, or, at the very least, it did not happen on anything like the same scale. Yes, it is not unusual for a few problems and a few bugs to be present, but with SW:BF, it's practically the case that there are more bugs and problems than there is game. It feels half-finished, it looks half-finished, it plays half-finished. In short, I have played betas that are more complete than this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.