deanb

http://store.steampowered.com/app/202485/ - High Res texture DLC http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=72850 - the Workshop http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=7375 - first mod

Revive. So anyone up for this in the nearish future?

http://www.theverge....ore-first-games First games for the Win 8 App Store.

I assume the "primaries" are coming to an end cos Obama is now stepping up to the plate: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16913174

If the horse wins the person that bought the horse gets everything. The Jockey was paid the £100 for that race no matter if the horse wins or loses. Which of course isn't a very good incentive to make the jockey do well. He goes home with £100 regardless, and no guarantee he'll be in the next race whether he gives it his all or just gently jostles the horse around the track. Horse and a dog race is still not a very good analogy because it assumes only one of the horses/games can win. It's more like they all win if they pass the finish post. But sometimes a horse breaks a leg, or sometimes the horse owner shoots the horse half way around the track. Or even forgets he owns the horse and fails to tell anyone he's put this horse in the race. Oh and this is an immortal horse which you can put out in many races, and even if it doesn't finish the race the first time you can make it run the race later on. I feel terrible because you wrote so much (and I read it all), but there's not much to respond with. Mainly cos I knew much of what you wrote already :/ (in fact to a degree I'm unsure if you're responding to me or a general refresher for everyone). Yes games can be expensive to make, but I rarely see any that are major major flops, and with the advent of digital sales it's not like it's impossible to recoup the costs. You're not printing out 1million discs and hoping to get everything in on the first few weeks, printing out some "platinum" re-release later if it does well. Now you put it out and you have infinite goods, it never goes off sale unless you take it off sale. SE posted their finanical statements other day but unfortunately "digital entertainment" = all games, not just digitally released stuff, i.e PSN Classics AKA FFVII-IX. Otherwise I'd have had some cool info on just how much they're making from 15 year old games. http://www.gamasutra...eloper_tim_.php I was reading this earlier, it's somewhat relevant, especially around end of page3/top of page 4 onwards. Mainly how the studio has become modular post-brutal legend and can deal with XBLA/PSN/Phone/re-release/kinect/upwards type games. There's no reason why having a minor "flop"(1.4million) should be the end of a studio. And it also shows that studios don't need to be either a) always making AAA games b ) always making $30million risks either. edit: Neither you nor I can say that since we don't work for the studio nor do we have access to their balance sheets. Sometimes cutting people is necessary. As just mentioned: We do have access to their budgets. EA especially, they've actually got mentions of all their closures even in current reports (well I say current, nothing for this past year yet. Latest reports). It's seemingly more profitable to lay off studios than have them continue making more games. Then again making more games costs $30million a pop, but with the current market they can infinitely publish the already made games at no extra expense. Work sucks. That's a fact of life. This isn't slave labor. After all, there are oodles of people lining up to work for free (as interns) for game companies. When supply of labor outstrips demand, why pay more for your workers? The market decides the cost of everything, including labor. We're also in a pretty shitty economy. Studios are being very conservative with their money and are betting on what they think are sure bets and aren't going much outside their comfort zones. Hollywood has been doing this for years and outside of a few indies here and there, most movies are cookie cutter shit, just like most games these days are cookie cutter FPS shit. Battra, working for free is slave labour. It's kinda the definition: all work no pay. Also maybe the labour outstrips demand because there's all these developers without work cos their studio got closed? Maybe something to it there. Though as previously mentioned many, e.g Robot Entertainment, are making their own independent studios. Closing studios just seems a bit like killing your golden goose. You keep the goose, it continues to lay golden eggs. Some may be bronze or silver instead, but it's shit tons more eggs than no goose will get you. So ... why do you hate publishers? I'm not getting that. Why are their jobs worth less than those of the developers? Games fail all the time. Sometimes a studio is able to absorb the cost and sometimes they can't. Most of the time when publishers fund a game it's to make a profit. Sometimes they lower their expectations and release something on a budget. Sometimes smaller scale can make bags of money, sometimes big productions can lose tons of cash.Even the experts get it wrong some times. I don't hate publishers (well..the idea of publishers at least). I've never once said they're worth less than the developers, I said I don't get why they're worth infinitely more. Publishers have money and connections, that's it. Connections don't matter no more and money can come from anywhere. But only some folks can program, or animate, or model. The system seems to be if you have $30million then you get rewarded with $200million. If you're the one with the skills to turn $30million of money into $200million of product, you get given jack shit of that. $30million doesn't turn into $200million on it's own, I find it absurd the idea that just cos you have money you get to claim all rights to whatever money that turns into at the end too. You get your $30million back, then you share a cut of the $170million with the rest of the developers. Simple.

I think first I should become rich enough to not care about $30million going down the shit hole. If you think the project you're spending $30million on (that's a fucking lot of money, just to reinforce that here, and that's more the starting end of the pool, not the $150million TOR end of the pool) is potentially going to flop, why are you spending $30million on it? As has been stated there's plenty fish in the IP Sea, you can put your money on another more sure fire horse.

So the publishers think the game is good enough to throw $30million+ at, but still feel it's enough of a failure to take on the perpetual revenue, the IP, etc as "compensation". I'm not buying it. It's a bit like betting at a dog race, and if the dog doesn't win you get to take it home to eat. Even if the dog does win it's still a 50:50 chance it'll get a bullet in it's head or not and you take home the winnings regardless. Shit deal for the dog either way.

See, this is the sort of Capitalist vs the Workers argument that people have been making since Marx. The problem is that it's a fundamentally flawed one due to the fact that the developers are not slaves; they are employees or contractors. There is nothing stopping them from being independent studios. As I stated, many are becoming independent studios. Publishers don't have the grip they used to, the tools to make and publish your own game are there. If you want to make and release a game you don't need to got to the big publishers like you used to. Companies do it all the time. You hire workers as contractors for a project. They then freelance to another studio or project. Unless you're a developer with lots of projects going on at once (like Nintendo) you're essentially paying people to be idle between projects. Or making DLC, or another game etc. Studios aren't "freelance". And Nintendo are a publisher. The workers at a studio don't put out the game then sit on their thumbs until months later when a new title is announced. For example when Pandemic was shut down they weren't doing nothing, they were working on BFIII. With Ensemble they theoretically had AoE4 in the works. I can't really see it being cheap to finish a game, lay off the entire studio, then build a new studio to make the sequel, lay them off rinse n repeat. Why is it stupid? Why should a company guarantee long term employment to a developer if it can't guarantee a business need for that person. Companies are in business to make money; employing people is merely a side effect. You can say it's not fair, but really, what is? It's stupid because you're offering shitty terms? No job security? Terrible overtime conditions? Stressful deadlines? It doesn't matter if you've done a good job, doesn't matter if you've made a game that's raked in millions, come up with a really awesome shooting system or whatever. It probably explains the constant sequels with barest lick of paint, the lack of innovation within the AAA game space, etc. Why bother putting in your all when you'll probably be all laid off when the game comes out anyway? p.s sorry for apparently being a marxist. edit: Here's why: Developers get paid (whether salaried or hourly or by a roadmap or however) a set amount, whether or not the game is successful (putting aside abuses such as withholding paychecks which are a completely separate issue). The publisher fronts the cash and takes the risk of the game flopping. The devs give up the potential to profit big if the game goes big in exchange for guaranteed payment if the game fails. Wanting to get paid up front for the work AND receive a profit share later is wanting to have your cake and eat it too, and only studios with a fairly sure thing are going to be able to swing that kind of deal. So those making sequels like COD get their cake and eat it then yes? And what of the games where the publisher isn't fronting the cash, just publishing? How often do games fail though? Also surely that's the publishers problem, they're the publisher, they publish the game. They're the ones that get the revenue from the game, surely they're the ones having their cake(and the recipe) and eating it? It's not really the fault of the developers if the publishers fail on the end of marketing and publishing the game. If the publishers think the game is going to fail, why are they funding and publishing it?

Consumer: Why are you cutting parts out of the game to serve back to us as project $10 stuff? Developer: Nothing is cut, you get the complete experience. The extra DLC is just us being nice and giving you free stuff. Consumer: So in other words I could get the game much cheaper used and still get the complete experience.

The saves aren't a major advantage? (Also not seeing what'd make ME more suited to a TV over a monitor, but that's personal taste I guess. All my games go through the same display and it doesn't seem to hurt console/PC titles)

I would have thought my use of quotations marks on "complete experience" may have given away my sarcasm. It seems silly to try and push passes and buying new as awesome if buying it used and much cheaper you're getting the full experience anyway.

I know that one 6264. I'm just wondering what EAs angle on the reasoning is. From my understanding Origin is nothing more than a storefront (I've not used it much for a long while, maybe it got updated with useful features?) so I see no reason why a game not bought from that store is being associated with that store.

I'm not saying the publishers shouldn't get anything, but I don't see why they should get everything. If there were no developers to work for them then they'd have no games to sell now, let alone 30 years down the line. Hard to make money from nothing. Can't see the board room guys sitting down and coding a game themselves. Yes I know they have people to feed, but the publishers aren't laying themselves off, it's the studio and all it's employees that get laid off once the game is wrapped up. Look at THQ and MS. THQ are currently said to be in the shitter, THQ have closed several studios down over the past year or so. MS is getting shat on for a lack of new IP. MS also closed down several studios. Ensemble was closed down and went on to become Robot Entertainment which developed and published Orcs Must Die. The power isn't exactly in the publishers hands any more, seems stupid to work employees under such restrictive terms and with no guarantee of long term employment either. IP may be a dime a dozen, but it's hard to turn an idea into cash unless you've developers to make it into a product you can sell to consumers.

Can Thursday (or anyone else with a link) explain why it's tied to Origin. I.e the benefits we get from it over the seemingly inferior ME and ME2?

http://altdevblogaday.com/2012/02/02/i-feel-used/ One of the guys from Volition gives his two cents on Online Pass. The tl;dr is he likes them and that consumers could be educated to like an xbox that doesn't play used or rented or borrowed games. (well, he does cover rented games but seems he has no idea how they work cos he suggest MS doing them) Also "for only $60". "only". Fuck this guy really must be literally be bleeding money if $60 per game is "only $60". My main issue, something I guess I've only somewhat formulated in my mind, with online passes n the like, is the fucking pass itself. The whole point of consoles was "put the disc in the game and play it". Now cos devs can't be arsed to make a fucking working game you put the disc in then download the patch, then come to the menu screen, find a 2p to scratch off the foil, then input the code with your controller, then download the unlock pass, then you can finally MADE WITH BLINK VIDEO. EA CHALLENGE EVERYTHING. BIOWARE GROUP. SCALEFORMHAVOKNVIDIA. Now we can play the fucking game. Woot. What the fuck. Srsly, publishers are making it worse than PC games. AACTUUALLY!!!!. It's even easier on PC. Remember how I didn't know Catwoman was content slashed from Arkham City? That's cos I didn't have to input a damn code cos it's PC and PC has no fucking used market you morons. (The only two games I actually have that have online pass codes for PC are...EA Bioware games. Just include the content on the disc ffs) If you're buying the game used you don't have this bother cos you've already gotten a "complete experience" without all the faffing about to put in codes to get the actual complete experience. (It reminds me of the anti-consumer anti-piracy tactics on PC games)

Well why don't contracts allow it? Why is it considered a-okay for you to make a game that the publisher will be getting revenue on 10, 20, 30 years later while you are out on the streets unemployed? Seems a very shitty end of the stick to be given considering your the ones that actually made the game in the first place. Probably explains the large rise of indies of late actually. Why work for some company for overtime, stress, etc and eventual firing, when you can work your own, be your own publisher, and for as long as your game is on sale you'll derive the revenue from it? Also it was my understanding that artists, singers, actors etc do get paid royalty. Not like the beatles (as was the example) were paid £10 an hour then kicked out the door while the record studio racked in the cash off the resulting album. That's not how they became millionaires.

If the game can be sold for perpetuity why can't people be paid for it perpetually? Also it's not really developers fault if they're all fired as soon as the game is out the door... amend: See I've seen Online Passes as "Well we the develoeprs should be paid for our work" (I'm pretty sure that was a Naughty Dog guy). Yet they're not getting paid for their work with online passes as they come out after the game is made and developers paid (and potentially fired). So the money just goes to whoever happens to have the IP at the time.

I quite liked my Tocco Lite. Also this is nifty, but I imagine it's also hugely expensive.

For one person to discuss politics? edit: yes, my "belief" in evolution, because we evolved morals in our moral bladder. p.s I'm all up for splitting this into a religion thread if that's what folks want?

People are free to believe what they want though. If people believe that same sex couples shouldn't marry, or that women shouldn't abort, they're free to not get married to the same sex or free to not abort. The government isn't forcing them to do that. What they shouldn't be doing though is taking their beliefs and enforcing them on everyone else, which very much seems to be the case. If someone believes that same-sex marriage is a-okay, but the religiously inclined government has forbid that then they are being pressured to be one way and not the other. Also morals and religion are not entangled at all. It wasn't a land of zero morals and then some guys wrote the bible and poof suddenly everyone was like "shit, I'm not meant to murder by neighbours stolen ox?". Morals existed before religion, and they'll exist long after religion is gone. Religion does not dictate laws.

The dev is the folks that develop the game. Joe Blogg the texture artist, A. Nonymus the script writer, Bill Grates the programmer, etc etc. And I'd have been cool with MS as your pick of studios as examples. I'm not keen on their "lets close down the studios n lay off the devs, then make AoE:Online and Flight two years later anyway"