pouët.net

Im not sure i follow you here Navis, in relation to the subject we now have at hand. When i see the demos you make im always left blown away. They all run fast on my machine so if its bad code, atleast its not obviously so. Doesnt it require the patience of a saint putting all that together?

Yes, what I'm saying here is that while I do have the patience needed for putting together a big demo prod, my patience runs out very very fast when it is about installing and playing games. I really don't know why.. Maybe because with the demos at least you make something out of nothing, while with games I don't feel the same..

I'm with navis there.

With demos, you spend all that time and effort creating something new, learning a lot and increasing your skills at things that are actually useful now and then. With games, it's pretty much just a pleasant way to waste your time, and who wants to waste a load of time doing something unpleasant like installing a game just to waste a bit more time after? There's better ways of wasting time :)

lol ah ok..well i love gaming. its my favorite way of wasting time over movies, television etc. creativity is never wasting time imo even if only you and joeschmoe understands what you just did and why its cool :)

I'm with Navis as well. As far as game companies and revolutions and such go, it's exactly the same situation as in every other software company, with the management and scheduling perhaps being even a bit more clueless and demanding. Do you see Apple engineers up in arms, or Microsoft employees, or $YOUR_FAVOURITE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY? No.

It's just work, nothing more. No matter how the end user might see the product.

eebliss : you kind of make me regret to have spent that time posting a long message to try and explain things to you.

You keep talking nonsense (you obviously know close to nothing about how games are made nowadays) and you keep being insulting towards Xenusion and his work just for the sake of it and just for the sake of ranting without the slightest objectivity.

Gloom was right (once again)

(despite what some people bullshitting about passion and whatnot, it actually is just work. Sure we have a coke machine here and a room full of game consoles to play around with and a lot of funny coworkers, but every time I see someone demanding such passion from me, my hair sticks up.
Here in the real world, passion for your work turns into necessary long days and more stuff to implement before the deadline and thus into poor quality of life)

so what im hearing is...other people dont do it why should we? In television as another media/entertainment industry they do revolt internally now and then if management demands becomes unbearable or they feel their journalistic integrity threatened. Dont coders and artists have that feeling of an integrity that is theirs to defend? im seriously asking a quesiton here, because i cant make your explanation meet ends.

keops, ok, so heres you hug back. geez

What you are saying is: I want X, and because you don't provide it, you need to do Y to get me X. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to really, really excel and really make a difference and overdo myself, it would be on my own time and on my own risk. Would you do that?

I sure as hell wouldn't. And that has nothing to do with integrity. Game companies are being driven by marketing and management, not developers, just like any other company. Personally I am happy with the quality of my work and do not feel exploited at all. And I prefer to keep it that way. If you're not happy with the product, don't buy it. If enough people don't, then things will change. And seriously, if you warez games and then complain about them, you can go fuck yourself.

Just out of curiosity.. which games companies do have good management + some passion in the teams? I'm sure there must be some.

yes as is blatantly obvious...or not!

next to nobody actually buys pc games, and im one of those that actually does allbeit after checking out a full version if i want to buy this game or just delete it and forget about it, rather than rely on some "fixed" demo.

I used assasins creed as an example, but fine...lets talk the witcher. nice demo, the game however is a disaster area of errors. I feel stupid that i didnt download it and try it out first, but relied on a demo for me choice of putting down money for it. The only thing that nearly makes up for it is that now they are going to actually finnish the game and release it. free for us that allready has a license thankfully.

Considering that they still make them, I would say you are dead wrong.

talking about exploitation of the developers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseis

probably the worst case I've heard (although I wasn't part of the team). With these conditions, needless to say, the title is now vaporware even though a good chunk of our GDP was "invested" on it. Shame..

psonice... i actually think cdproject does, sans the management bit. The witcher has many great ideas and is the obvious labour of love for role playing games. The technical skills behind just doesnt allways match the ambitions of the game...much to my regret.

elsehwere and please tell me where you work so i can avoid your games of 9-5 work thank you very much.

Navis: Got a some kind of information/link on the project? The wiki page seems to be quite clean.

elsewhere...crysis 1 million copies sold, 20 million copies downloaded. so i think im right actually.

psonice: i can't tell by experience but i'm rather sure that the bullfrog story is quite representative in that field.

elsewhere: there is nothing out there in english (there are some youtube clips, search for theseis game).

This was a case of management (with 0 cummulative working experience in games) not knowing exactly where to steer the project (we are talking about an almost 5 year development cycle) which by the end was a recycle of the good ol' "tomb raider" cliche. Shame that almost half of the Greek scene that was involved in it has now since lost their jobs...

How can you write a comment like this? - so you think that all parts of doing a game is about passion and love?... jesus fucking christ!

Iblis: Digital chocolate / Sumea. So far my review scores have been excellent and I have coding many best-selling and popular mobile games, and our first PC game has been really popular as well now that it's been out a few weeks.

And now excuse me, I will lose my manners for a while. Fuck you for demanding my life from me to concentrate on my work. Fuck you for demanding anyone to use their life to fulfill your fantasies and thirst for mere (cheap) entertainment. Fuck you even more for whining after pirating games (I have nothing against piracy and I'm happy if people like my games enough to even pirate them, but getting something for free and then whining about it is just about as low as you can go). Seriously. See some of posts on www.gamewatch.org to see what it's like for some people.

Where do you work?

you cant loose what you dont have, especially not when you completely ignore what im saying. I used assasins creed as an example, but i obviously should have used the witcher which encompasses just about everything i said equally well. I went the "right" way about the witcher game, and got the demo, was well pleased with it and then bought (because of the demo) a game so error ridden that it felt like outright cheating releasing that demo in the first place.

With assasins creed i was smarter, i got the full game and took a look at it before i paid money. thank heavens for that.

What about the Wii? Are you saying developers should stop using 10 year old hardware? :S

xernobyl: look you troll... we're talking PC games here, ok? stfuthx