Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Corrupt panel of judges award SWTOR the overall winner of the Game Developers Choice Online Awards
Karteli
Member CommonPosts: 2,646
ref:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/179174/Live_from_the_Game_Developers_Choice_Online_Awards.php
Special thanks to Sevenstar61 in thread
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/367031/page/1
for revealing the award link.
Among the most puzzling:
Best New Online Game: Star Wars: The Old Republic (BioWare Austin)
"It was a long journey to get there, and a lot of people. It's a huge game, the biggest thing I can imagine to do, this project. A lot of effort went into it." - Former executive producer Rich Vogel, who was, touchingly, brought on stage by the current team members in attendance to accept the award with them.
The advisory board:
http://www.gdconline.com/aboutgdc/advisoryboard.html
A significant number of people on the board are either affiliated with EA or once were. Rich Vogel was recently laid off from EA and dusting off his resume after working on SWTOR (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174300/SWTORs_executive_producer_leaves_BioWare_amid_layoff_reports.php), and Gordon Walton is responsible for the alpha version of SWTOR's Hero Engine, which he said EA would finish it themselves (http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/). Mr. Walton left EA's subdivision BioWare in early 2011 (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33051/BioWare_Austins_Walton_Leaves_To_Join_Playdom_Austin.php).
Among the other questionable "voting" board members:
Joe McDonagh, studio director at PoPCap Games (owned by EA) http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/12/confirmed-ea-buys-popcap-games-for-750-million-plus-earn-out/
Euguene Evans, VP & Studio GM of Mythic (owned by EA) http://www.developconference.com/page.cfm/Action=Visitor/VisitorID=482)
Chris Mayar, former Technical Director at EA http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,217471/
Min Kim, former Localization Direction at EA http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Kyung+min/Kim
Robert Zubek, former EA employee (http://arnetminer.org/person/robert-zubek-319979.html)
[I'll check others if I have time, gave up because 85% of them had an EA affiliation that was publicized]
Others are still affiliated with EA, or were at one time. It hardly seems fair, even though SWTOR wasn't up to par with expectations, that developers get to vote for themselves to advance their carrers, on a panel that has a significant proportion of EA influence. Just to give themselves awards. Journalists ran with this story, but none of which actually looked at the makeup of who was capable of the votes.
What s sham to gamers.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Comments
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
That is one thought, I'm not sure if I should cheer or cry.
I added some other names to the post of EA's influence.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Don't think you even needed proof.
Let them stroke their own ego... reality speaks louder
RIP Orc Choppa
While thats true for us the players, unfortunately its not true for the majority of suits running the development of most of these games. Theyre very out of touch witht he playerbase and instead rely on "experts" and things like rewards that tell them "Hey, these games received awards and are very popular. We should do things just like them because it will sell a lot." and we wind up with the same old recycled crap for years instead of any of these companies with the developer talent and large funding doing something original and innovative.
Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review."
This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it.
Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review."
This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it.
/facepalm. That is not why the writer was fired. You should get your facts straight before spewing nonsense.Back on topic, agreed the deck was stacked in the voting, but from my viewpoint the clear winner once again would be none of the above. Hasn't been a good MMORPG been made in years from what I am looking for i'm the genre.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
That is the reason, actually. They tried to get him to not post his review and instead do a "pros and cons" debate article with another staff member. Except, all the questions and answers were more or less written so that the more common complaints could be stated by the writer, and then torn apart by the other writer. Instead, he just posted his review anyway.
But the safe story that MMORPG.com went with is "We didn't like how he came into the game so predisposed to give it a bad score, and we didn't like that he bragged about giving it a bad score."
Here is a kotaku opinion piece on the topic of SWTOR's industry awards:
http://kotaku.com/5950920/pile-of-industry-awards-for-star-wars-the-old-republic-a-sad-reminder-of-the-game-that-might-have-been
Did people even take a good, close look at the other nominees or too busy trying to find conspiracies and the Evilness of the game industry that's oddly enough always whenever someone disagrees with a game or its company and never when it's about a game or company they like? In any case, I did take a look at the nominees, and don't find it that surprising that they got a number of awards. The others that came out this year and made the list were even less impressive, so no wonder.
I'm going for Occam's Razor on this one, but hey, whatever.Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review."
This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it.
/facepalm. That is not why the writer was fired. You should get your facts straight before spewing nonsense. Back on topic, agreed the deck was stacked in the voting, but from my viewpoint the clear winner once again would be none of the above. Hasn't been a good MMORPG been made in years from what I am looking for i'm the genre.That is the reason, actually. They tried to get him to not post his review and instead do a "pros and cons" debate article with another staff member. Except, all the questions and answers were more or less written so that the more common complaints could be stated by the writer, and then torn apart by the other writer. Instead, he just posted his review anyway.
But the safe story that MMORPG.com went with is "We didn't like how he came into the game so predisposed to give it a bad score, and we didn't like that he bragged about giving it a bad score."
? That was way, WAY before last month, the time that you created this account of yours, many months ago and iirc among a flood of posts and threads in that time. You're saying that you were keeping that close watch on all the forums of this site for that long and only recently decided to create an account and post this abundantly? Wow.You should take your own Occam's Razor advice here bud.
It was kind of big news and spread to several other sites.
Occam's Razor would make me think that someone with such particular knowledge might have hung around on this site for far longer than a mere month, but maybe not under the same account. But hey, whatever, I merely found it odd but when it comes down to it, in the end I don't really care if this is your 1st or 2nd or gazillionth account you might have for this site. Back ontopic, which ones of the nominated games would the OP rather have had win the awards in his/her opinion? I'm curious.That's pretty much the opposite of what Occam's Razor means.
Occam's Razor would make me think that someone with such particular knowledge might have hung around on this site for far longer than a mere month, but maybe not under the same account.That's pretty much the opposite of what Occam's Razor means.
Don't think so, but hey, if it makes you happy, feel free to believe whatever you like, I'll do the same.Occam's Razor means the obvious straighforward answer.
What you offer is paranoid conspiracy theory.
Razor = simple.
You = complicated.
Occams razonr says don multiply causes indefinitely. If you want to talk about a pair of socks, you really dont need to trace it back to a necessary god to explain their existence. You can pretty much stop at the sweatshop that made them to tailor a demand driven by advertising sucking you in. More than enough causes already. No need to them say "oh, and god realised socks would be neat and allowed us to formulate the idea of socks, advertising fashion and sweatshops to help bring about his holy vision, praise be!"
As for SWTOR.
Ill be honest, i loved bioware. But the arrogance they showed in the promotion and distribution of that game made me want it to fail. I dont mean i kinda hoped it would fail. I really wanted it to. And i enjoyed the game.
Theres a littany of things in the game itself to moan about, but i wont get into them. Instead heres a few things i remember that really made me lose a lot of faith in them.
1. Red zoning. An utterly odious decision. The lord god knows why (occams razor - invoking god to explain it is unnecessary since theres some dude somewhere else that decided it without the compulsion of the lord), but this was a terrible... no, insulting decision on a vast swathe of their playerbase who had spent the previous two years following the game like mad.
2. Twitter. Jesus wept. Community announcements posted to a twitter feed when you have your OWN FORUMS is just insane.
3. Moderation. Community moderators whose only job seemed to be throwing out infractions and locking threads. From beta through live, the community managers were the worst kind of forun moderators. When they were there...
4. Communication. Horrific. From the refusal to offer a clear answer about credit cards for red zoners, to the self implosion of the forums around 1.3 where they simply vanished as the game was pretty much put to the sword by the community. Not forgetting the absolute refusal to respond to player feedback in betaforums, test forums or on general forums. No communication at all. Nothing. Absolutely dreadful.
They then had the cheek in their post 1.3 autopsy and FtP announcement to suggest they made the mistake of listening too much to the wishes of the community (please dont make wow in space) rather than sticking to their original design philosophy (lets make wow in space!) because somehwo they accidentally ended up with wow in space comtra to their original design philosophy.
That game deserves to die. I dont say this often, in fact i think its the first time ive ever said it. Im pretty moderate generally. But the sheer arrogance of those people in the way they treat their customers.. it was baffling. I was a lifelong bioware fan. Infinity engine and all that. But they deserved to eat crap for the way they dealt with their community on it. It was very clear we were walking dollar signs and we take what bones they throw our way and stfu.
http://www.gdconlineawards.com/rules/
eligible titles are persistent online video games which were initially released in Beta or full version June 1, 2011 – May 31, 2012 in North America
there wasnt much to pick from
what does timespan leave? SWTOR and TERA ?
EQ2 fan sites
Yeah given the choices if i had to vote i woud too vote for SWTOR. There was not much to choose from.