Topic: Games Industry Death Watch 2010-present

[Kytim89]

Just one correction here: in the game, North Korea doesn't become a super power overnight.

I knew its something like that, but that's still way too short of a time for a 3rd world backwater to rise up to a position where it could conquer not only South Korea and Japan, but also the USA. That is kinda as stupid as the notion of the USA becoming a global power 16 years after its independence and then invading Great Britain. Sure the USA is powerful enough to do that now, but a mere 16 years after independence? So I didn't mean overnight literally, but 16 years is still a very small amount of time as far as history is concerned.

Not to mention that the Japanese aren't exactly a people who are known to surrender easily, so I think that game's notion that Japan folds and gets annexed without a fight is absurd.

It has taken China about thirty years to go from a country pretty much in the stone age to an economic juggernaut that is nipping at the heels of the US. Who knows where they will be in two more decades?

The stone age? Did you know China is the country which invented paper, the compass, and gunpowder? Heck, if anything they were one of the very first countries to emerge OUT OF the stone age.

I was refering to China getting out of the hole that colonialism and communism dug for them. I once collaborated on a project at my college for a economic and political science convention centered around China's rise in the last thirty years.
 
Well, let's get this back on topic.

[ThePerm]

lol, ill get into this discussion later

but a short, China is non-aggressive. The average Chinese person wants to buy you not kidnap you...if that is a good enough analogy.

[Chozo Ghost]

but a short, China is non-aggressive.

Tell that to Tibet.

[Lithium]

sooo... how 'bout dem videogame studios shutting down?

[oohhboy]

Zynga looks to be heading towards a slow death as it's business model falters. That is one "Games" publisher I would be happy to consign to the mists of history.

[nickmitch]

but a short, China is non-aggressive.

Tell that to Tibet.

This gave me lols.

[oohhboy]

An in depth look into the death of Free Radical.

I am surprised any games get made, let alone good ones considering how dysfunctional the developer/publisher relationship is.

[Caliban]

I am surprised any games get made, let alone good ones considering how dysfunctional the developer/publisher relationship is.

Indeed, oohhboy. Have you read the anonymous stories that get sent in to the Penny Arcade's newest creation? The Trenches: http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/9810

[oohhboy]

Yeah I read every single one and I can relate. Power hungry idiots, zero tolerance rule use, ignorant bosses, hopeless coworkers, useless procedures without reason. Not something just confined to the software industry, but it certainly magnified in it since it draws in people with passion, something to give and it slams into a wall of soulless MBAs.

When a game is buggy I know it's not QA fault most of the time. I have sent in my share of bug reports that thankfully got fixed. But here a quick example of how not to do QA with your customers. It's a link to the Trendy forums on Steam, the guys who made Dungeon Defenders. Why you ask? It's the broken bug process in action. I didn't link to the main forums because it gets worse.

On the Mac, for a lot of people the game doesn't run at all, me included, It has been like this for months and it didn't have to be like this. You see they had a Beta period for the Mac and people quickly started logging bugs with them. It became pretty obvious that the game wasn't ready to go gold on Mac since it had multiple show stopping and performance bugs. 24 hours later they released the game to the general public as is without warning or a single fix. Day one, I gave them my bug reports.

Week after week go by without a fix for most of these bugs while the company releases DLC after DLC after DLC barely testing them, more often than not breaking the game in the process. Bug reports flood in and patches get released daily. But there is another problem. Because of how the game engine is set up, the files have to be overwritten wholesale, rather than modifications made. So when you want to tweak a number, the tweak becomes a 100  MB patch. Not only that, the Beta/bug testing process has been captured by a select few instead of being a public consultation process, so you got a bunch of idiots railroading whatever balance changes they want instead of taking care of basic stability issues. The developers in an attempt to be "Responsive" bows before them meaning even if they wanted to take care of the basics, they are too busy making balance changes and cranking out DLC to do proper fixes. Since patch speed is the measure of a good patch, once a balance change is made it goes live in hours, wasting hundreds of MB of bandwidth, GBs in a week, then the rollback comes when the patch breaks the game too much and starts affecting some of those testers. Then they break the patching process itself requiring the entire game to be rolled back.

The testers then defend the game tooth and nail since they now control the game. The developers then hide behind these people, have an opaque debugging process where finding the "Right" channels is the key or else nothing gets fixed. The poor tech support guy on the forums can offer nothing more than "turn off the sound". They had some significant technological debt when they first released, but they never took the time to repay it or even maintain it. Actual, proper, methodical testing is non-existant. So now even on the PC side the game is starting to collapse under it's own weight.

It's on a bundle right now, but please don't buy it or this game especially if your on a Mac. It will cause only grief.

[Uncle_Optimus]

An in depth look into the death of Free Radical.

I am surprised any games get made, let alone good ones considering how dysfunctional the developer/publisher relationship is.

Thanks for the link.
Indeed, it is likely no coincidence that we see so many recent stories about developers swearing off publisher relationships now that they have self-publishing platforms to release on.

[TJ Spyke]

So OnLive has laid off ALL of its employees, yet the company somehow claims they are "just fine". I don't know any companies that fires its entire staff and is fine.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176180/OnLive_lays_off_all_employees.php

[broodwars]

So OnLive has laid off ALL of its employees, yet the company somehow claims they are "just fine". I don't know any companies that fires its entire staff and is fine.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176180/OnLive_lays_off_all_employees.php

Well, obviously the employees now reside in the Cloud as well.

[Shaymin]

Apparently the company froze so they had to turn it off and back on again.

[tendoboy1984]

OnLive? I thought they were doing quite well?


It doesn't matter if OnLive goes down, because Sony now owns Gaikai, so the future of cloud gaming is still bright. Now if only the internet companies removed bandwidth caps and lowered prices / raised speeds...

[TJ Spyke]

Cloud gaming will never be big, the whole idea is bad. You essentially just rent the game, even when you "buy" it. You lose the games if the service shuts down, and you can't even play your games if the Internet goes down. Add in that broadband is still not available everywhere (it's expensive for the providers to add it to rural areas). OnLive was doing OK, but not that great.

[BranDonk Kong]

They only laid off AT LEAST HALF of their employees, they're just fine!

[tendoboy1984]

Cloud gaming will never be big, the whole idea is bad. You essentially just rent the game, even when you "buy" it. You lose the games if the service shuts down, and you can't even play your games if the Internet goes down. Add in that broadband is still not available everywhere (it's expensive for the providers to add it to rural areas). OnLive was doing OK, but not that great.

The same negative points can be said of Netflix, Pandora Radio, Spotify, and countless other streaming services.

[TJ Spyke]

Except those are all subscription services, there is a huge difference. You aren't paying to get individual movies or songs. You aren't paying $20 to essentially rent a movie (and with Netflix, you can get physical discs too). And you don't even pay for Pandora, so that is moot for them anyways. With OnLive, you pay $40-$60 to "buy" a game that you have to be online to play and that you lose if/when OnLive goes down.

[MegaByte]

It doesn't matter if OnLive goes down, because Sony now owns Gaikai, so the future of cloud gaming is still bright. Now if only the internet companies removed bandwidth caps and lowered prices / raised speeds...

LOL

[Kytim89]

This will never happen, but Nintendo could buy OnLive and use its streaming infrastructure for a cliud based Virtual Console service that charges a monthly or yearly fee for access to their games.

[Chozo Ghost]

If OnLive goes down that's just fine.... just means less competition for Ouya.

[SonofMrPeanut]

If OnLive goes down that's just fine.... just means less competition for Ouya.

Except Onlive is working with Ouya.  So...

[shingi_70]

http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/8/17/3250589/onlive-official-layoffs-statement


Onlive has been. Aquired by a newly formed company with substantial funding. Still the rumors are going to hurt them in the long run. I'd still say thieronly true hope is to grab onto one of the big three or steam and that won't happen due. To microsoft not needing them and steam and nintendo not having an intrest in that yet.

[TJ Spyke]

Cloud gaming will never be "big", it will have its niche but will never become the main way of gaming because the negatives outweigh the positives. OnLive's only real positive is being able to play games your PC normally couldn't handle. Maybe have it be a back-up option you get when you buy a retail game (like how many DVD/Blu-ray Discs now come with a free digital copy).

[NWR_insanolord]

If they reworked it as a rental service a la GameFly where you paid a certain amount and could play whatever you wanted it would be a lot more attractive. It wouldn't matter anymore that you lose the ability to play when the company goes away if it were just subscription-based. I'm not sure the publishers would let that happen, though.