So yeah, i'm jaded. Jaded of games. Jaded of people like you morons constantly babling in this forum, thinking that you know what you're talking about... I've yet to hear anything intelligent from people here, so i guess not many work in the gaming industry.
oh, the irony. You keep whining about...everything, yet fail to mention one thing they could do to improve things. Please, since you clearly are the only intelligent person ever to visit this sorry forum, share your wisdom, what is there to be done? What is missing?
This doesnt mean i didnt agree with you, because i do, but instead of crying and insulting the rest of the mankind, offer some improvements.
All right mr. nitwits... I had enough of those 2 brain cells comment so here's my freaking essay you all seem to crave for...
I have called it: "The philosophy behind this" Enjoy.
One can wonder why i am fighting so hard to get things done right in the gaming industry. It's probably over the head of the common understanding of most people who think i'm just a "freak". But i fight for a cause, that is way behond the picsels that is put on your screen and no, i ain't no religious fanatics either.
I believe though that the gaming can be used for so much more then just burning your time through it. It's been a platform i have used all my life to evolve as a human being, and i will always encourage gaming experience that makes you evolve rather then those who are making you loose sense of the meaning of that word.
Finding the words in english for that is very hard for me, but i've been able through the reading of different articles over time to find the words, sometimes just by literaly quoting them when they nailed it right.
So for those who are interested to learn what's behind that fire that burns me about all the lousy games outhere who are not delivering, strap yourself in for a long dive into my brains and gut feelings...
Fun is learning in a safe-environment.
Those few words have a lot of implications. Games are mini-worlds where we can try out all sorts of ideas and possibilities, and see what works and what doesn't. Games let us fail with little penalty and then let us try again. Games teach us how to time our jumps, how to aim, how to solve puzzles, and how to manage resources. They teach us strategy: when to attack, and when to avoid a fight. It would be great if they taught a wider range of lessons, but that's up to us game designers to make it happen.
A lot of parents complain about what impact games have on children, but those parents are generally only seeing the trivial surface of the game, rather than what the game is REALLY teaching. Chess appears to be vaguely about war (it has knights and castles and kings), but it's really a game of controlling space, of reading the opponent's mind, of trickery and tactics and so on. Grand Theft Auto appears to be about shooting cops and hookers, but it's actually a game of exploration and freedom. There is value to exploring a virtual world that lets you do things you can't do in the real world. Don't be fooled by the gangster facade.
I reflected on what Starcraft taught me when i was doing competition and went up to the top 100 players on earth: an awful lot. Where to even begin? For starters, there's tactics and strategy. When should you attack and when shouldn't you? You have to understand the critical points in a match, the situations that blow the game wide open. If you are winning, you need to avoid these situations, if you're losing you need to create them. Starcraft taught me about knowing the mind of the opponent. You can't just play the odds and do the textbook-correct responses, you have to adapt and anticipate your opponent's moves.
The game is merely a medium through which you play against the other player. Some players develop skills in planning, while others develop their skills at improvisation and adapting to any situation they are thrown into. I learned first hand that when all seems lost, if you push, push, push and never give up, it's still possible to win.
And yet all that is only a tiny fraction of the lessons I've learned. Starcraft in my case was a one-on-one game, so you must rely on yourself to win. You can't mill around while your friends do the work for you. Self-reliance and continuous self-improvement is the only successful road. And yet, I also learned that no man is an island. The tournament structure has always been open to all comers, so that an undiscovered talent from Idaho who trained secretly in his basement can show up to our biggest tournament and win it all, if he has the skill. No need to qualify or be level 60 in an RPG or any of that. And yet, this mythical person never ever materialized in my 5 years of playing the game. The only way to become good is to play against others who are good. It takes a village to make a champion. You can't turn your back on the whole world because you NEED the community to improve. You must learn and train with them. It's pretty hard to do that without making some friends along the way, too.
Another very important lesson was that winning at Starcraft is a meritocracy. Your race doesn't matter. Your religion doesn't matter. The only thing that matters in a tournament is your ability to win. The community looks up to those who can win, regardless of ethnicity. There is no substitute for growing up in an environment that cares about results, rather than race. Nothing a teacher or parent could ever say measures up to that life experience about race-relations.
There are also a lot of things us Starcraft players take for granted. They are truths so self-evident, that we never talk about them because it never even occurs to us that these aren't givens. Here's a few examples:
A fair game does not give material advantages to one player over the other
A fair game gives each player equal opportunity to bring whatever legal materials he wants (in our case, you can choose any race you want (Terran, Zerg, Protoss) but there's no need to grind them up to level 60. All players have immediate equal access to all races.)
It's ok (and the entire point!) to bring to the game A) more knowledge than your opponent about the nuances of the game, and more skill than your opponent.
Time invested should count for nothing in a fair game. It might take me 1 hour to learn a few nuances and gain a certain level of skill and you, 1000 hours to learn the same. The hours don't matter; only the knowledge and skill matter.
I'll say it again: winning is a meritocracy.
Finally, playing a fair game is what it's all about. It would never occur to us to play a game where one player gets to do 50% more damage because he has a level 60 zergling!
Starcraft was so fun for me because there is so many things to learn. Looking back, these are life lessons that I couldn't do without. From the strategy of the workplace to reading the mind of others, to a sense of fairness, I am rich with reward from my gaming background.
But since a few years, that same philosophy have really started to scare me a bit. I started to think "What is World of Warcraft teaching all these people?" I've played the game for about 6 months, and went through enough reading since then to understand exactly the direction they're taking. So i have a very good idea what the game is teaching, and it's downright frightening. Unlike the uninformed parents who are afraid that GTA is going to ruin our youth, I'm not afraid of the silly facade of World of Warcraft: I'm afraid of what's it's really all about, deep down! That's a much more powerful and influencing thing than the mere surface. (Starcraft isn't about destroying your opponent base "independence day style" with a bunch of carrier either: that's just a surface, too).
So let's put the cards on the table. Here is what World of Warcraft teaches:
1. Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill. If you invest more time than someone else, you "deserve" rewards. People who invest less time "do not deserve" rewards. This is an absurd lesson that has no connection to anything I do in the real world. The 3D artist we have at work can create 10 times more value than an artist of average skill, even if the lesser artist works way, way more hours. The same is true of our star programmer. The very idea that time > skill is alien.
2. Time > skill is so fundamentally bad, that I'm still going to go on about it even though I started a new number. The "honor system" in World of Warcraft is a disaster that needs to be exposed for health and safety reasons, if nothing else. This system allows players to work their way through the ranks, starting at rank 0 and maxing out at rank 14. Winning in pvp gives you honor points, and at the end of each week, your performance is compared to that of other players, and you gain ranks based on that. Now, losing also gives you points, but not as many. The system overwhelming rewards time spent playing, rather than skill.
What is the health and safety danger I spoke of? You might think that if you waltz into this honor system, and perform better (which in this case mainly means you played longer) than everyone else on your entire server, that you would become rank 14. Not by a long shot. Your gains are capped each week, so it will take months and months to gain rank 14. Once you get up to rank 10, you are now competing against people who play the game 10 hours per day and up. There is no limit to how much a person can play, so players are driven to play every waking moment (forget having a job or social life) for fear that if they don't, some OTHER player will do so and be ahead in rank.
The idea that time > skill has gone from a merely fundamentally bad idea, to being actually dangerous, addicting people to the point of fatigue and death. No wonder China's new laws about MMOs are addressing this problem. MMO games must only award players full experience points for the first three hours of each day, half experience for the next two hours, and no experience after five hours. (Logging off for at least 5 hours will reset the system.)
3. Group > Solo. You can forget self-reliance, because you won't get far in World of Warcraft without a big guild. By design, playing alone (even if you are the best player in the world) will get you worse loot than if you always play in 5-man dungeons. If you always play in 5-man dungeons, you'll always get worse loot than if you play in 40-man raids. The player base has been hit over the head for so long with this notion of 40-man raids, that players are taking that as given. I see so many people who have been fooled into thinking this is justified, that it actually scares me. They think that you shouldn't be allowed to get good loot unless you do something with 39 other people, because that's harder. Coordinating 40 people is hard, but so is winning a Starcraft tournament, which you have to do by yourself.
Some personality types want to do things with 39 other people, but my personality type certainly doesn't. I have to wonder why the 40 person raids have good loot at all. To me, doing something yourself is far more valuable, and a much more interesting test than getting 40 people to coordinate fairly mundane tasks.
Unfortunately, the game offers no difficult solo content leading to good loot. (Note to picky readers: there is some, but it's soooo far out of whack with raid rewards that we can safely ignore it, the same way Blizzard does.) The designers must be so extraverted, that they can't fathom the introvert point of view.
4. Group > Solo. I'm not done with this yet. As an introvert, I'm pretty outraged that this game is marginalizing my entire personality type. The developers repeatedly confirm that 40-man raids deserve the most powerful items. Many of the players are brainwashed by this poor assumption, often saying "It's an MMO, of course you have to group with 40 other people do accomplish anything." Ironically, World of Warcraft was originally founded on exactly the opposite idea. The game started off by saying that EverQuest had that philosophy, and that Warcraft will not. So much for that.
Because the "real" drive behind a MMO is the persistant world and not the fact that you can play in multiplayer, (like so many mislead people think) playing by yourself in MMO is a perfectly valid thing to do. You are part of the player-driven economy. You see a living world around you with people doing their business, laughing together, and arguing. You can group with people when you like, or not if you don't feel like it. It's an experience wholly different than a single-player game, and no serious person could think otherwise.
The best way to put it is that it captures the concept of "being alone together" with other people. Going to a movie by yourself so you share the experience with the others in the audience. Going to a study hall where other people are studying, rather than staying in your room alone. There is a very big demand for the ability to "be alone together" in a shared social environment that allows grouping and social interaction, but does not force it by making almost all end-game content in the form of 40-man raids.
Warcraft and many other MMO's—maybe accidentally—hit upon this concept, and now seems spit on it and all those who appreciate it. If a Blizzard developer read this, his PR department would say they are not spitting on this play-style, but unfortunately the game design speaks louder than words. "Spit on" is exactly how I feel. But far worse is the idea that millions of people are learning that doing things on your own is bad. Albert Einstein accomplished far more in the field of physics by himself during off-time as a patent clerk than a 40-man raid of so-so physicists ever would. I want little Johnny in Idaho to learn that lesson, but he sure won't find it in World of Warcraft. 40 mundane people with a lot of time would put Albert Einstein to shame any day of the week in this game.
5) Guilds. The tools for creating and maintaining a guild in World of Wacraft seem benevolent enough. After all, they encourage cooperation. Unfortunately, they create a social situation totally alien to me in the real world: a constant "us vs them" mentality. In the real world, I am part of many different communities, and I have varying levels of influence and seniority in each. I'm fairly prominent with Starcraft and most RTS, and have a lot of influence in "outcast" gamers community, especially here in montreal. I ran some sport tournaments in restaurants called "La Cage aux Sports", and have been one of the most famous player of the dead Virtual World. All to say that i was in touch with a fair amount of different communities.
Meanwhile, in World of Warcraft, I live in a world of "guild-only events." You're either with a guild, or you're nobody to them. I can't imagine being in only one IRC (chat) channel at a time, or choosing only one gaming community, yet I can only join one guild at a time. It's a very weird social environment with the same dangers as extremist nationalism and flag-waving.
6) The Terms of Service. The very idea of using the terms of service as the de facto way to enforce a certain player-behavior goes against everything I've learned. A game should be a system of rules that allow the player to explore. If the player finds loopholes, then the game developer should fix them. It's never, ever the player's fault: it's the game developer's fault. People who currently make deals with enemy faction (Horde or Alliance ) to trade wins in battleground games are not really at fault. They are playing in a system that forces anyone who wants to be rank 14 to do exactly that. A line in the Terms of Service saying that you shouldn't behave this way changes nothing, and teaches nothing.
Or consider the humorous example of Lord Kazzak. He is an "outdoor raid boss." That means he's a big monster that wanders around the world, and you need 40 people to kill him. You don't get to go into your own instanced dungeon to fight your own personal copy of this guy; there is one wandering around the server and you all compete to kill him so you can get his good loot. When Lord Kazzak was added to the game, Blizzard also added a list of Terms of Service rules that would make your head spin. None of these rules were hard-coded; they were all "squishy" rules added on top of the actual game rules. And now for your reading enjoyment, the Lord Kazzak Official Rules of Engagement (I did not make these up; they are real!):
This policy is an extension of the current in-game harassment policies.
PvE Ruleset.
When a group of players has engaged Lord Kazzak, any other players interfering in the encounter may be given a warning, regardless of faction, as in the examples below:
A group of Alliance characters has legitimately engaged Lord Kazzak and a Horde character engages Lord Kazzak as well (Horde player receives a warning).
A group of Horde characters has legitimately engaged Lord Kazzak and a Horde character engages Lord Kazzak as well (the second Horde player receives a warning).
PvP Ruleset.
When a group of players has engaged Lord Kazzak, any same-faction players interfering in the encounter may be given a warning as in the examples below.
All other possibilities to join the battle are allowed.
A group of Alliance characters has legitimately engaged Lord Kazzak and Alliance character engages Lord Kazzak as well to disrupt this raid without any PvP solution for the Alliance group (the second Alliance player receives warning).
Here's some more things that will get you banned:
“Playing too much," using a rogue/warlock combo to lure bosses too far from their spawn points, fighting on rooftops, entering unfinished areas (why are they accessible at all?), buying gold or items on eBay (eventually the courts will probably overrule them on this), collaborating with the other faction in battlegrounds, "using terrain exploits to your advantage," player-created casinos (that merely use the in-game "/random" command), player-created bingo games, profanity (even though there is an in-game language filter, to say nothing of free speech), posting on forums about whether a guild is full of Blizzard employees, posting on the forums about why you were banned for posting about something seemingly constructive, advertising a gay and lesbian friendly guild that's a safe haven from the endless use of the words “gay” and “fag” in the general chat channels, having a name such as "JustKidding," "CmdrTaco," "TheAthiest," or "roflcopter"... and a whole lot more things, too.
These examples go on and on, but the basic idea here is that Blizzard treats the players like little children who need a babysitter. Maybe that's why i feel that this community is becoming or has become so dumb and way beyond their blind fanboiness. There are mountains of rules in the terms of service that tell you that you shouldn't do things that you totally can do in the game if you want. Why they don't just alter their design and code so you can't do these things is beyond me. But this mentality is drilled into the players to the point that they start believing that it's ok. They start believing that it's not ok to experiment, to try out anything the game allows in a non-threatening environment.
Well—that's a dangerous thing. That's the point at which the game stops being "fun" by my definition, and it's also the point at which the game can no longer teach. The power of games is that they empower a player to try all the possibilities that he can think of that the game rules allow, not that they have pages of "rules of conduct" that prevent you from creative thinking.
But we all know that World of Warcraft hasn't really stopped teaching. Although it's ability to teach is highly impaired by the entire "Terms of Service" approach, it's still teaching literally millions of people that time spent is more important than ability and that group activities are strictly superior to personal improvements and self-reliance.
This problem is so troubling, that I feel a personal need to take action. The only thing I can think to do, though, is to design an MMO that teaches the right things. Look for that on store shelves in 2012 or so.
So that's what it's all about. Nothing more, nothing less. I hope it helps you people understand what i'm trying to build in Absolum "the game", and Absolum "The Guild". If you're waiting for War Hammer, feel free to hop by http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=15168&TabID=127912 I'm done with this thread.
/bow
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
It's probably over the head of the common understanding of most people
My, my... aren't we full of ourselves....
Fun is learning in a safe-environment.
As is learning in a dangerous environment: Skateboarding, Bungie Jumping, Sky Surfing, etc.. or not learning in a passable environment: Drinking, Drugs, sex, etc...
A fair game does not give material advantages to one player over the other
<sigh> having taken more than a few classes in military science (wargame theory and logistics being the most important here), I can tell you that a game can be perfectly matched at the beginning (chess, checkers, etc.) and eventually evolve into unfairness and inevitable victory for one side. Inversely, there are games that start out with one side at a disadvantage (Fox and Geese) but generally evolve into a more fair contest and inevitable victory for one side or the other.
MMOs are unique in this regard. Since even if the game was completely twitch based with perfectly balanced gear and abilities, players that had been with the game longer would have access to more resources and therefore more options. Furthermore, the player that had been with such a game longer would understand all of those options thoroughly. I may not be the greatest player of Street Fighter on earth, but I bet I could beat someone that had only been playing the game for two hours. This would be like letting your chess opponent take five turns before you even take one. As long as the game mechanics stretch over a long period of time, there will always be advantages for early adopters.
Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill.
Persistence and patient can be skills too. If someone stops 3 feet from gold, does that make the find of the person who didn't stop any less meaningful?
Group > Solo. You can forget self-reliance,
This is just common sense. Ten miners are more effective than one miner. 100 Bandits are more of a threat than 5 bandits. Ancient and Medieval warfare were largely practices of attrition. And what periods of actual history are fantasy games based on?
Or maybe you're just pissed because the rewards in most MMOs are distributed evenly and automatically. At any rate, no one is "self made." I don't care what Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche say.
Some personality types want to do things with 39 other people, but my personality type certainly doesn't.
Then why are you playing massively Multiplayer games?
Unfortunately, the game offers no difficult solo content leading to good loot.
See my "Group > Solo" response for your answer to this one. A group of people is capable of accomplishing more than any individual. It just makes sense that the uber monsters that take a group to destroy would be in possession of uber loot.
Because the "real" drive behind a MMO is the persistant world and not the fact that you can play in multiplayer
Under this definitions of persistence, an empty movie lot would be "persistent." Likewise, every single player game with an ending would be "persistent." Given, the players in most MMOs don't have the ability to leave any significant mark on the game world, it's the other players that define the world as persistent.
they create a social situation totally alien to me in the real world: a constant "us vs them" mentality.
I take it from this quote that you:
1) don't live in the U.S.
2) were home schooled and never experienced Junior High and High school
You also get a healthy dose of "Us vs. Them" in the workplace and public politics. This is the default mentality of conflict and conflict is a defining feature of the human experience.
WOW! This topic is just great. The OP's post(s) are some of the best Ive seen on these forums for awhile. I check on here when I'm bored every now and then to see whats happening, and I just HAVE TO reply in this topic. OP, I agree with you 99% (there are a few things i disagree with, but they are minor)
I too am a "Jaded gamer". I have not experienced a truly fun MMO since Asheron's Call. DAOC I admit was slightly fun but nothing in the caliber as AC. AC was truly a game, and like they say - once you play AC you can never find a game that satisfies you cause its just that fun.
There are so many things that upset me and you have just hit the nail perfectly in many of these posts that I really am trying to figure out what to reply to first; you're tone, I admit, is a bit pompous - but that shows that you are indeed well educated and that youre no bimbo like the rest of these...ugh....assholes. Yeah, cry flame - I dont care. These idiodic, nonsense posts (you know which ones I'm talking about) that you morons put up in "response" to an obviously thought out, intelligent, and passionate post just BOGGLES me. There are so many idiodic posts that I cannot and will not quote them all. Really people, come up with a CONSTRUCTIVE post for once. The only thing that you serve to do is hurt yourselves. I am really appalled - you would think a group of people that have interest in the same activity would work together, but instead many of them turn into complete idiots spewing useless sh*t. No wonder the gaming companies take full advantage of people like you; you fall right into the pit of shooting down great ideas like the ones that are posted above. In short, shame on you. Shame on you.
Xyang, I am also extremley ticked off at how the industry is going. I am not a proffessional developer, by far (my forte is definitly not math) but I have much experience in playing MMO's since the early days of AC. You have hit the nails on the head with WoW and current games - they promote intense competition for items that simply rot the game; the game, which is meant to be fun, becomes a second job as everyone is caught up in the race for the better items.
Then we get the usual remark I see posted COUNTLESS of times in threads or in people's sigs; 8 million people are happy playing WoW. But think of this -
Are you REALLY happy?
Take away all of your die hard support for the game and take a look at it, if you can, with an unbiased approach. What are you really doing when you log into the game? Is it really fun? All that you do is grind, farm, grind, farm. You do these repetivive tasks over and over again. I was in the game in WoW that one day, and I realized just that; it isnt fun. Its NOT FUN! It becomes like he said, a SECOND JOB. It is not fun. Next time you log in, ask yourself while youre killing that boss; Am I having fun, or is this like coming home to just go to another job?
WoW was also successfull because it was the first MMO with a
1) Recognized name in the gaming world
2) A competent company making the game without any major bugs in release
3) Excellent Advertising
4) Because of the first 3 reasons, many people who did not play MMO's joined in on WoW - so they never heard of the MMO before. Thus, the "WOW" factor of simultaneously playing with other people kick in and you get hooked.
Then theres the PvP and the rulesets to make it "fair". War is NEVER fair. I Dont want to stand next to a dwarf when Im an orc and not be able to attack him in case I get "banned". I wanna smash his head open! Darktide was the best time I have EVER had gaming - it was so brutal, but thats what made it so fun. Now when you die, theres no death penalty. Whats the fun in fighting if your not afraid of death? You become a ghost. A GHOST?? thats it? Give me a break. The Honor system like he says failed and is completley moronic in nature - the more time you spend killing people the higher you raise in rank. It is not dependant on player skill, its dependant on how much time you put in. And the people who only get the real reward out of it are the no lifers who are truly in their mother's basement.
And finally what jaded me the most was character customization. The class system is one of the worst things put into these games. You think you are so cool in your warrior - guess what? The guy next to you has the EXACT same abilities save for his race and guess what.....you guessed it. His items. That level 70 super sword hes wearing that he grinded for six months every day for, you need to grind for as well. A game based purely on itemization is inherently flawed. Back in the old games like AC, you could fully customize your character by choosing if he used an axe, with war magic, or with healing magic, while shooting a bow. So you put thought into what skills you level up. However now you are reduced to a clone, a clone with a million others competing to become the "best" with the items. They say classes promote people working together - but like the OP said, what if you dont want to work together with people sometimes? Why should you be punishe dif you want to do what YOU want to do? And you dont need to be pushed to work together as a group - players, if they really wanted to, will group together on their own, without some developer prodding them with a fork. And dont give me the talent tree sh*t. The talent tree is a joke. I would even venture to say that old SWG when it first came out was better than this WoW trash.
I could go on, but my fingers are getting tired. Cheers to you Xyang, this is a tough crowd, but there are good people in this forum that listen to you. We are out there, we're just muffeled by these...leeches. Sad really. So yes, I'm definitly Jaded, and will be until a good, FUN game comes out that actually makes me go "yeaaaah this is cool" instead of falling asleep in front of my computer screen.
WOW! This topic is just great. The OP's post(s) are some of the best Ive seen on these forums for awhile. I check on here when I'm bored every now and then to see whats happening, and I just HAVE TO reply in this topic. OP, I agree with you 99% (there are a few things i disagree with, but they are minor)
There are so many things that upset me and you have just hit the nail perfectly in many of these posts that I really am trying to figure out what to reply to first; you're tone, I admit, is a bit pompous - but that shows that you are indeed well educated and that youre no bimbo like the rest of these...ugh....assholes. Yeah, cry flame - I dont care. These idiodic, nonsense posts (you know which ones I'm talking about) that you morons put up in "response" to an obviously thought out, intelligent, and passionate post just BOGGLES me. There are so many idiodic posts that I cannot and will not quote them all. Really people, come up with a CONSTRUCTIVE post for once. The only thing that you serve to do is hurt yourselves. I am really appalled - you would think a group of people that have interest in the same activity would work together, but instead many of them turn into complete idiots spewing useless sh*t. No wonder the gaming companies take full advantage of people like you; you fall right into the pit of shooting down great ideas like the ones that are posted above. In short, shame on you. Shame on you.
I could go on, but my fingers are getting tired. Cheers to you Xyang, this is a tough crowd, but there are good people in this forum that listen to you. We are out there, we're just muffeled by these...leeches. Sad really.
Oh but i know that dear Ghost... You and the majority of intelligent people that read but actually don't post is the crowd i'm adressing myself to. So you can keep hope that there is "at least" one active developer living and breathing everything you have craved to play for so long.
How can i be anything but pompous when you see the type of idiots i have to deal with on a daily basis Like those 2 less then nothing (Recant and jimmy whatever..) who think made an "intelligent" argument against me, while you just can't make an argument as much as you try, to defend a pile of rubbish. No matter how good you are in the choice of words you use: You have no case.
It is that kind of wannabe that i must face in this industry "every single fucking day". Those few jerks don't have much impact here on a forum beside pissing off people with their 5 cents theory or simply given most of us a good laugh. But when you realise those same twits are in charge and the one saying "yes or no" to your project, let me tell you that i have "absolutely no consideration" with those morons. I would be glad in fact to face them in any real life situation and solve this the good old ways... But this wouldn't be civilized right? Today, civilized mean hiding behind a computer to throw people shit without even considering that the person you are throwing the shit at, is that same person that represent the salvation of the industry you seem to love. So they can kiss my ass.
As for you ghost and everybody else reading this, without taking an active part because you don't want to deal with those idiots, well i'm glad to be a flag ship that will stand against mediocrity in gaming for you all
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
You sound like they type that is simply not happy with life ....period. No mmorpg is going to fix that. I suggest you simply stop playing mmorpg's or go develop your own. It doesn't matter who you have worked for. You could have been the office mail guy or something...so what? If you are so jaded towards mmorpg's then stop playing them ,leave these boards and try to improve what I suspect is a rather miserable life.
You surely are good at making assumptions. My life is great and rewarding, but let me replace you in the context for the purpose of this topic:
I've stopped playing MMO's a year ago. Thanks for the advice but i wouldn't be posting here if i was satisfied with the market.. I would be playing it.
As far as developing my own MMO, i've been doing just that since 1997. But guess what: Money don't grow out of trees, and by the shit you can see on the market, they obviously don't care much about the quality of the game play you provide. The gaming industry is a big incestuous whore, where you need to lick the right ass in order to get your funds. Doesn't even matter if you got talent or not... (Ubi Soft being the best example of this. Just make your research and come back after once you know a bit more about what you're talking about)
Finally, you are a complete moron. The reasons why i spend my precious time on some gaming board is EXACTLY to help the gaming industry to grow. The "jaded gamer" post is certainly not my main one. I don't remember how many times i've went to different MMO games and plastered their board with awesome ideas that could be implemented rather easily. A few where taken, the majority of course wasn't. (for the reasons that i described above, not because it wasn't a superior concept)
So for having contributed in the shadow of this industry for the past 12 years, i give myself the right to come here and spit at those who keep dragging it down at the bottom: Either by encouraging stupid products, or by making them. It's a duty that i take very seriously since the gaming industry is not only my bread and butter, but also my greatest passion in life. I have a tendency to be very protective of those i love, and it's no different when it gets on a philosophic level.
One more post like yours and i'll have to post an essay though....
Oh..I see now.
You are jaded because your attempts to make an online game has failed and hurt your ego. I think your mental health is suspect and it would be wise to log out and seek professional help. Your apparent emotional attachment to either online games or online forums..or both...is unhealthy.
What is unhealthy is trailer park trash such as yours, who completely waste my time with their stupidity. What makes you think i have "failed" in my attempt of making that ground breaking MMO? It's in construction and doing well. The only thing i've said, is that without the money, it will take much more time. But i ain't a quitter. My sole attempt at trying to make a peasant like you understand where i'm coming from is the best proof of that!
I'm a gaming humanist... Maybe the LAST gaming humanist on earth!
so when you "save" enough money to get your game to come out what year will it be? and will u be able to play it when it comes live? cuz seems to me like making a game ALL by yourself is going to take decades let alone raising enough money to get it going...
so when you "save" enough money to get your game to come out what year will it be? and will u be able to play it when it comes live? cuz seems to me like making a game ALL by yourself is going to take decades let alone raising enough money to get it going...
Of course, it would be ludicrous to even think about making a video game by myself, let alone a MMO. Fortunately enough, i'm not the only soul on this earth left that is doing games for the "right" reasons, so the team is building up as the project advance. The good thing with people working with an ideology behind their mind, is that we can make the statement that the game will be release "when it's ready", and actually do just that. Those words doesn't mean anything in the mouth of big corporates and to the other extreme, wannabes.
So you ask when, and i'm tempted to say "when it's ready". But seing the current pace we got now, i would bet my bottom dollar it's going to be done by 2012. The fact that we must work on other gaming project at the same time to fund the primary one surely slow things down. But hey, i'm in the early 30's and most people are between 25-30 as well so, nobody's afraid to die before completing the project Since we work with the great Unreal 3 engine, it should still be graphically viable and most importantly: Playable on pretty much any machine too.
We're always looking for great talents that are in this business to produce great games first, and of course, making a living out of it. Although it involves moving in montreal, which that's the reason i don't broadcast it all over the place, and only on local web site. I know most of the best elements in Ubi and EA montreal so, it's not that hard to find burnt out employees and recruit them on the project
Those people would prolly had left the gaming industry completely if it wasn't for us maintaining our super high quality standards...
So i guess i have more then answered to your question just there. Feel free to pass by when you are curious and wanting more!
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
What was this thread about again? Let me take a look... hrmm.. I see...
Your introduction tells me you use to be a janitor (or maybe even a mail worker) at one of these gaming companies. You go on telling us how you seen the dark face of creating video games and that you're disgusted by it. Weren't you suppose to be sweeping! You lazy bas.. uh.. erm...
The next couple paragraphs are just opinions that aren't even in-depth - just more squabble by someone who's telling people they're basically wrong for judging a game because they never cleaned the floors in a gaming company. I'm sorry on behalf of most people who do not have the experience you do.
The last paragraph is what gave me a little smile, unlike the rest of this rant by another joe. You proceed to judge 8 million people (not myself included) to the 300lbs obese man that likes his McDonalds! Just like I told those damn Anti-Amercians, we are free to choose what we do and eat!
What was this thread about again? Let me take a look... hrmm.. I see...
Your introduction tells me you use to be a janitor (or maybe even a mail worker) at one of these gaming companies. You go on telling us how you seen the dark face of creating video games and that you're disgusted by it. Weren't you suppose to be sweeping! You lazy bas.. uh.. erm...
The next couple paragraphs are just opinions that aren't even in-depth - just more squabble by someone who's telling people they're basically wrong for judging a game because they never cleaned the floors in a gaming company. I'm sorry on behalf of most people who do not have the experience you do.
The last paragraph is what gave me a little smile, unlike the rest of this rant by another joe. You proceed to judge 8 million people (not myself included) to the 300lbs obese man that likes his McDonalds! Just like I told those damn Anti-Amercians, we are free to choose what we do and eat!
Hmm ok... Did you take your coffee this morning? I guess you just selected a few points that you didn't like and didn't read the whole thing. My whole thread is not only a rant, but i also explain "why" i feel like that.
Sorry to disapoint you but for your information: You can't work in a gaming company here and be a janitor. Janitors are not allowed to really see what's going on, because they have to clean when everybody is gone... Besides, they are not even hired by Ubi Soft, but by the company that owns the building and "rent" the 3rd 4th and 5th floor to ubi soft. Nice try
As for the rest of your comment well, i said everything i had to say about that. Just show that you're not that pathetic to only base your argument around a few lines of what i said, and take the "whole discussion" into consideration. Otherwise, get lost.
Thank you.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
Gotta admit Xyang, you're a very skillful troll. Your posts have just the right dash of hubris to get the unsuspecting riled up. I've been down this road. I've got the T-shirt. And the only reason I'm feeding you is because I'm bored. Anyway, down to business....
Like those 2 less then nothing (Recant and jimmy whatever..) who think made an "intelligent" argument against me, while you just can't make an argument as much as you try, to defend a pile of rubbish. No matter how good you are in the choice of words you use: You have no case.
And your rebuttal to my points was.... What exactly? I see the ad hominem attack. I see something that looks like a conclusion.... But where's the support. Man! I hope you don't write code the way you write arguments.
It is that kind of wannabe that i must face in this industry "every single fucking day".
Wannabe what? I wannabe rich. I wannabe in porno movies. I wannabe cool. Mainly because I'm none of those things and they seem desirable to me.
Are you talking about game development. If I want to make a game, I'll just grab a copy of Code Warrior and a couple of artists. Nothing major about that. Hell, half the people on this forum could make a simple puzzle game or MUD on their own in less than a week. And yes, I said MUD in less than a week. As I recall, there was a 16K MUD competition as well as a flood of "not quite" stock DikuMUDs that proliferated during the 90's.
You must be talking about AAA game development. Sorry, I don't want that. Working 16 hour days, 7 days a week is nothing that I want to be bothered with. Especially when you consider that you work on the game for 5 years only to see it in the bargain bin 3 months after it goes gold. Do the math 100 developers * 16 hours * 1825 days = a game that gets beaten within 24 hours of release and has multiple full walkthroughs available within 72 hours. Interestingly enough, those numbers stay roughly the same for RPGs since the people writing the walkthroughs are using hacks and cheating devices. Thank you Game Shark!
Of course, it would be ludicrous to even think about making a video game by myself, let alone a MMO.
That pretty much depends on the game you're producing. There's this guy named Kenta Cho who makes some of the best old school shooters ever made, all by himself, and for free. There's this really awesome RPG that was made by a Husband and Wife team called Mount & Blade, maybe you've heard of it. The Nintendo DS hit Brain Age was made in 3 months with a team of less than 10 people. Even Minions of Mirth, an MMO, had less than 10 people actually involved with the development of the game.
Then again, You haven't given us any reason to believe that you actually make games for a living. Maybe if you gave us a job title or pointed us to a finished game with your name in the credits....
Yeah sure... I'll give you my real name on a public forum like this I'm not that desperate about recognition...
So you say i'm a troll, and you are bored. You are making a shit load of assumptions, which seems to be either the fruit of your imagination (which would prove you got at least something running in that pea brain of yours) or you are simply looking in the mirror, and describing the kind of loosers that you are in detail. That's called: Projection. Elementary dear Watson...
You definitely sound more like a troll then anyone else in this board. But that's what troll do: Write out of boredom, because they can't find anything better to do with their sorry life. Are you actually fighting for a cause? Are you actually ready to DIE for what you're saying here? Well guess what: I AM! So come back when you are ready to put your life on the line before opening your stinking mouth. Because as for myself, i'm ready to put everything i have on the line when i'm defending life principle. In this case "using gaming as a personal way to grow as a human being".
The gaming platform can be so much more then the current junk food and be used for the evolution of humanity. I believe in that since i was a teenager, and never stopped believe it either. If you're intelligent enough, you can use principle that you can find in "great games", (not piece of junk like WoW) to evolve as a human being. But i guess all of this is over your head huh? Troll don't need to evolve. They just have to copy paste the best flame they have found in their hours of trolling on the internet and throw it at anyones face since they can't speak with their heart and soul. You're pathetic. And to think people like you will eventually reproduce and share those values with your future dumb kids More rubbish to populate our planet... What a shame.
I'm making valid argumentation, based on my extensive experience in the gaming industry. All you can do is pissing vinegar, and based on what background exactly?... Yeah, nothing. That's what i thought. I just want to point out that although guys like Will Wright don't agree with my tone, they do agree with my overall philosophy. They just aren't as angry as me and more laid back.
So the simple fact that you fail to see what i'm trying to explain here just proves that you're completely clueless. Because i have yet to find any good game designer in this industry that doesn't agree with those principles i have illustrated. About that "bitch!" Now of course, you'll confort yourself by making projection about yourself that i must be a troll and all that bull shit. Well, the first thing you must learn in life to be successfull, is to learn beside "who" you're walking. You must be very poorly surrounded to threat a genius like me the way you do. But have fun with your mediocre crew anyway...
If your looking for proof of my accomplishment, take a number. You're not the first and certainly not the last one to ask that. It just proves that at the end, you "know deep down inside" that i'm right. You just need a "name on a credit" to validate it. That rest my case with your kind.
About those games you named, they might be good or not. I didn't tried them. One thing i know for sure is that there's so much you can accomplish with 2-3 people. It's not a matter of skills, it's a matter of "time". I don't code myself, i'm a game designer, not a programmer nor a 3D artist. I have my handful already working on 3 different projects game mecanics and lore. More then that and i wouldn't have any time left to keep parasites like you entertained in my thread
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
If you are a game designer, then I can only guess that these are bargain bin games - or you are overruled in your design 'ideas'.
There are a billion different games out there on different platforms and systems, with (tens?) of thousands of game designers the world over.
Less than 5% are ever any good, and less than 1% are classics that are still players.
Sure, if you worked on games, good for you - but it just goes to show how far removed you are from the people you are creating for, which leads me to my original comment.
As said before many a time 'screenshot or it didnt happen'
You've got your head so far up your own ass, you should take up a new career as a pretzel impersonator.
You carp on about the lack of respect that the designers of MMORPG's have for gamers then set out to call members of an MMORPG board morons etc. So effectively, you are demonstrating the same lack of respect you were railing at originally.
One man's meat is another man's poison. Accept it. Just because you can't find a game which ticks all your boxes, you don't have the right to challenge others for enjoying the games they play.
You state that you aren't being elitist and that anyone thinking so is only scratching at their own insecurities. In the same breath, you allude to having a great personality.
Right, well now I've stooped to your level, I may as well conclude by calling you a complete assgoblin.
No doubt, you will now wish to post a sneering response, questioning my intellect. If it makes you happy or more likely, if it gives you some form of gratification, knock yourself out.
No actually, i've said enough. I'm now enjoying myself laughing at how blind people thinks the world has no colors.
It's the burden of those who see to deal with the ignorance of those who don't.
So keep telling yourself that i make garbage games and that i'm just a troll with too much time on his hand. Whatever floats your boat. It's surely more conforting for narrow minded people like the 2 posters above to think that the world is flat, and that because they are morons, that no great people like myself can exist in this world.
Once again, keep telling yourself that you're my equal if it helps you sleep at night. The awekening will hurt soon enough...
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
At first this post seemed to have a few points that have been discussed many times before, albeit with a cocky breeze, I started to read it......I read early on from Xyang that he could take any criticism, kept reading....and nearly every response started with him calling someone an idiot or fool etc.
This thread is very distasteful, offensive, and all the major points that were outlined at the beginning somehow were contradicted by the very same person who proposed them.
This is in response to the original message that started this thread.
Get over yourself. You are an individual but just not that special. WoW is better than you give it credit. Warhammer will not be as good as you think.
Now a general response to the other few Xyang posts I read.
If I lived my life as you, I would make changes immediately, because there are some issues there that need to be dealt with. The first is attitude. Stop running around calling the work of others crap, especially since they could school you and they are the successful. Let go of the "me vs the world" attitude.
Im afraid you certainly aren't my equal, you aren't even close sunshine - Im afraid i, quite literally, own people like you - and you are one of the bottom feeders that lines my pocket on a day in and day out basis.
A 32 year old game designer from Montreal, Im sorry but that is so precious. If you hold your breath long enough and turn purple does that make you think people like me will actually listen and give two hoots about you and 'what you stand for', even though that's not even original.The fact you need to vent your spleen just makes it even more sweet as i see your little wormlike body wriggle on a big fishing hook, a bit like the child who thinks because he shouts loudest in his playgroup, that he is automatically 'the leader'
No matter how much you prattle on about who or what you are - you aren't even close - and you will always provide people like me an endless sense of amusement.
In my own opinion, which to be frank is worth more than yours judging the previous posts of, well, lets just say 'special child tantrums', you have bias, you have absolutely no ground to tell anyone their opinion is worth less than yours. The fact you work as part of the industry automatically disqualifies you from any kind of opinion, the fact you have seen part of the process doesnt mean you see the whole, and if you take the individual parts and quiz them, it shows that you are so far from being right its amusing.
You see the world as flat. You see the world without colour. You don't see what everyone else sees, as your own bile colours everything, your own bias changes everything - to the point that you missed the point a long long time ago. You have just seen part of a large industry from one perspective, from one small pidgeonholed little area. You don't have a clue and seem to concrete it with every further posting.
Of course you are more than welcome to refute this and show us what different angles you see, and why things are different - some experiences or examples would be great, or situations to at least show the general public on this forum why they should believe the 7 pages of replied to hot air you have expelled so far, as opinion is one thing, but opinion stated as fact needs to be backed up by evidence.
Originally posted by Xyang
No actually, i've said enough. I'm now enjoying myself laughing at how blind people thinks the world has no colors. It's the burden of those who see to deal with the ignorance of those who don't. So keep telling yourself that i make garbage games and that i'm just a troll with too much time on his hand. Whatever floats your boat. It's surely more conforting for narrow minded people like the 2 posters above to think that the world is flat, and that because they are morons, that no great people like myself can exist in this world. Once again, keep telling yourself that you're my equal if it helps you sleep at night. The awekening will hurt soon enough...
No actually, i've said enough. I'm now enjoying myself laughing at how blind people thinks the world has no colors. It's the burden of those who see to deal with the ignorance of those who don't. So keep telling yourself that i make garbage games and that i'm just a troll with too much time on his hand. Whatever floats your boat. It's surely more conforting for narrow minded people like the 2 posters above to think that the world is flat, and that because they are morons, that no great people like myself can exist in this world. Once again, keep telling yourself that you're my equal if it helps you sleep at night. The awekening will hurt soon enough...
I rest my case, your honour.
Of course you aren't elitist or have an inflated opinion of yourself. I certainly won't be losing any sleep. Why do you think people would want to bother using you as a benchmark ?
Should we have a poll to see how many people would aspire to be you ?
You've had your flame. Mission accomplished. That was all you ever wanted so there doesn't appear to be any need for you to stay. Have a nice life.
I think Xyang is interesting. I have initially discarded his DOOM & GLOOM approach, but reading from the reactions of other peoples, I think he hits something I didn't initially saw.
Of course, this come from a lowly/no life Game Designer of 32 in Quebec city! Even lowlier by some standards! Especially that I am nearly 33! ROFL.
Nonetheless, I support you Xyang, welcome to my world! I see that you despite raiding, maybe not as much as I did, but I guess this make us brothers in a way or another! Haha.
Xyang 1
Others 0
Please proceeds!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Im afraid you certainly aren't my equal, you aren't even close sunshine - Im afraid i, quite literally, own people like you - and you are one of the bottom feeders that lines my pocket on a day in and day out basis. A 32 year old game designer from Montreal, Im sorry but that is so precious.
ROFL.
See, the world resolves around Québec city...or maybe NYC! Montreal's been closer, he is superior!
PS: Is there any trace of sunshine in UK? I heard that the last time the sun was spotted in UK it was in the 1800ish, during the war against Napoleon!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
lol... so the Canadians have banded together against the US and UK?
After following this little thread, I think I might change my signature to something like: "my post is best"
And seriously, in this thread, my post is the best one! lol
Seems like Xyang ignored me and didn't reply... so let me summarize and restate:
1. MMOs today suck. agreed.
2. Xyang, if you are going to appeal to yourself as an authority in a debate, then you got to back it up and post info about yourself. If you don't want to prove you are a big deal in a public forum, that's fine... but you can't really appeal to it as an arguement point without proving it. So if you are a big deal, post some pictures! OR just argue the content. But without some proof, my default / initial position is that you clean toilets or something... If you want your position/history to mean something in an arguement, then you prove it. (I'm not being mean in saying that... still listening / waiting for the reply)
3. Put your money where your mouth is. IF someone else is paying for you to develop your ideas, then you are not taking any risks. In other words, if you are still an employee, then you are not taking risks... someone else is. Perhaps that is the source of your discontent? Discontent is actually a good thing. Let it motivate you to take risks and move towards being the boss/owner yourself. That's cool.
The only real judge is the market and your wealth or lack thereof. Being super-smart, (even IF you are), is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is money. IF your ideas are so good, and you got some balls to go with it, then you will leave your enslaved employee position (if you are still an employee), get some money behind your ideas, develop it, and rule the world. All talk 'in a forum' is really irrelevant and meaningless....
Yeah sure... I'll give you my real name on a public forum like this.
No one's asking your name peaches, we're asking for a job title / description or the title of a game that you worked on to completetion. Oh wait.... You said you were a "game designer." That's not exactly a position that you get straight out of college. maybe you could point to a game that you worked on as a team member before you dropped into the HMFIC position....
Yeah, I didn't think so.
But that's what troll do: Write out of boredom, because they can't find anything better to do with their sorry life.
Wrong. A troll is someone that diliberately makes outrageously antagonizing and offensive posts in order to get attention.
Are you actually ready to DIE for what you're saying here? Well guess what: I AM!
So in a world full of poverty, disease, pollution, and random senseless violence, you choose to die in the fight against shitty video games....
That's quite possibly the most pitiful thing I've ever heard.
I'm making valid argumentation, based on my extensive experience in the gaming industry.
A rather dubious statement considering that:
1) you haven't supported your conclusions with any evidence, antecdotal or otherwise.
2) failed to rebuttal any counterpoints in any meaningful way.
3) Still have not shown even the slightest proof that you actually work in the video game industry.
lol... so the Canadians have banded together against the US and UK?
After following this little thread, I think I might change my signature to something like: "my post is best"
And seriously, in this thread, my post is the best one! lol
Seems like Xyang ignored me and didn't reply... so let me summarize and restate:
1. MMOs today suck. agreed.
2. Xyang, if you are going to appeal to yourself as an authority in a debate, then you got to back it up and post info about yourself. If you don't want to prove you are a big deal in a public forum, that's fine... but you can't really appeal to it as an arguement point without proving it. So if you are a big deal, post some pictures! OR just argue the content. But without some proof, my default / initial position is that you clean toilets or something... If you want your position/history to mean something in an arguement, then you prove it. (I'm not being mean in saying that... still listening / waiting for the reply)
3. Put your money where your mouth is. IF someone else is paying for you to develop your ideas, then you are not taking any risks. In other words, if you are still an employee, then you are not taking risks... someone else is. Perhaps that is the source of your discontent? Discontent is actually a good thing. Let it motivate you to take risks and move towards being the boss/owner yourself. That's cool.
The only real judge is the market and your wealth or lack thereof. Being super-smart, (even IF you are), is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is money. IF your ideas are so good, and you got some balls to go with it, then you will leave your enslaved employee position (if you are still an employee), get some money behind your ideas, develop it, and rule the world. All talk 'in a forum' is really irrelevant and meaningless....
Hey Airhead. Sorry if i didn't answer the other post directly, but i thought all my post combine had already answered it. Since you came back for more, well i'll give you more.
1. Ok, your eyes are open. Good start.
2. That's really funny. As if posted picture of myself or anything like that would make any difference?? By me showing papers to you, along with every proof in the world that i've been in the credit of some major games, would really change your opinion about what i'm saying?? If that's the case, well i don't have the word in english to describe it but that's beyond pathetic. Cause the argument would remain the same, but "just" because it would have a corporate stamp beside it, you would "suddendly" consider what i'm saying for a valid argument instead of hot air? No thanks. Sorry but this would be a never ending game, because no matter how many proof i post here, there will always be some idiot to claim that he "knows" it's not me anyway. You clearly don't know how popular people like myself has to deal with wannabes like Johnny Cait Sith who "thinks" they have 10% of my knowledge or gaming culture and even talents. Sorry to disapoint you Johnny nothing, but it only takes one dude like me to keep 10 people at the bottom of human creation like you at bay. I must say that you are very good at copy pasting others flaming argument, but your junior stuff is the only hot air in this thread, and it has bad breath.
3. I guess you missed a few of my post. I'm definitely not an employee anymore and working for myself, with a small team (around 20 people) that see the gaming industry as i do. Clearly, i'm putting alot of my money in the project as well, because i have to keep small projects running in order to give the necessary milk to the big one. So far, there hasn't been a single dime that didn't come from myself or my teams pocket. There was a few investors, (it's not that hard to find with a game such as ours) but they we're either asking us to prostitute our work, or to rush the project into impossible delay. We're all cool with that by the way, which makes us way above the rest of the little and big company who sold out the first chance they had to.
Finally, i don't think money is the only power in this world. This is of course the main opinion of the people who are trying to refute my argument constantly. I believe that we'll conceive, to make in hell of this industry for us a heaven. A brave new world, a promise land, a fortitude of hearts and minds. Until i see this gaming world ours, i'll turn the darkness into light and i'll guide the blind. A man who wants to move a mountain, begins by carrying away small stones... And that's exactly what i'm doing here, every time i come to fight against the lies of corporate that a lot of you people have been brain washed with over the years.
Regards.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
I think Xyang is interesting. I have initially discarded his DOOM & GLOOM approach, but reading from the reactions of other peoples, I think he hits something I didn't initially saw.
Of course, this come from a lowly/no life Game Designer of 32 in Quebec city! Even lowlier by some standards! Especially that I am nearly 33! ROFL.
Nonetheless, I support you Xyang, welcome to my world! I see that you despite raiding, maybe not as much as I did, but I guess this make us brothers in a way or another! Haha.
Xyang 1 Others 0
Please proceeds!
Hehe well... I never thought one second this debate would turn around politics and ethicity but Johnny Doe seems to make it sound like it is with his puny comment about montreal. He's probably not aware of this but Montreal will become the "capital city" of video games and multimedia in the next 5 years, so if he likes to defend those corporate friends so much, you should show a little respect for a city that will be their head quarters...
As far as the score, it's more Xyang 10 vs Others 0, but i'll accept your verdict anyhow. A win is a win
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
lol... so the Canadians have banded together against the US and UK?
ROFL. I pick on 1 UK guy who was trashing Montreal (althought Montreal is an ugly city and deserve trashing, only folks from nearby cities are allowed to trash it). I even supposed that maybe, maybe NYC is the center of the world...err...yeah right, NYC is Canadian after all, not American at all! NYC, I am pleased to announced you that 1 guy, from Atlanta, just determine that from now on, you are Canadians! Hmmm, that means Canada basically double it population...and I wonder what to do with Maine?
The fact that 1 guy from Atlanta, come and bash that silly Montreal guy...yeah, that is a Canadian take over! Why limit ourselves at the US and UK? The World! The World! Nothing less!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
No one's asking your name peaches, we're asking for a job title / description or the title of a game that you worked on to completetion. Oh wait.... You said you were a "game designer." That's not exactly a position that you get straight out of college. maybe you could point to a game that you worked on as a team member before you dropped into the HMFIC position....
Ok so let's see... I'll provide a few title even with an insider analysis and at the end, you're still going to piss vinegar. Anyways...
I've worked on:
*** Pool of Radiance II (Could had been a good game, if it wasn't for an aweful bug at the installation that was "known" by Ubi but they decided to launch it anyway. Result: The bug was removing your reg edit, and about 10 000 of people had to re-format their hardrive...)
*** Tarzan (An easy to do license from Walk Disney for kids of around 6-8 years old. Ok hear this: At some point, every game designers have to actually play their game during a project (duh!) and there was a level i couldn't complete because the jump was too steep. Then i go see the producer to tell him "hey man, if I can't do that jump along with a dozen of testers, how do you expect a 7 years old kid to do it?? His answer was: Life is not fair...... Another good example of Ubi crappyness.
*** NHL 2004-2005 (That's my only experience with EA. 2 years, but averaging so many hours that it almost cost me my 6 years relationship with my beloved girl friend. Anyway... They we're "decent" titles if you like sports game.)
*** Shadowbane.... (Yeah, and not particularly proud of it. You have to realise though that those guys in Austin Texas "Wolf Pack" who we're calling the shot on the final design we're the worst piece of junk and complete noob i've ever seen! It even beats the MMORPG forums!!! That says it all...
*** Myst series along with Uru (This one was fun. Great team, great people. Rand (Atrus) is the man!)
*** Splinter Cell (Well the first one was good, and all the sequel after the third one are just over milking a dead lisence)
*** Far Cry (I've done most of the map and actually, this game i'm proud of.)
*** King Kong (That's the last title i've been working on. Was great to meet Peter Jacksons during the production too. I won't say it's a great game, but if you consider it for what it is a "movie game", i think it's one of the best in it's category so far. X-Box 360 port was a complete piece of crap. It looks better on the PS2 and regular X-Box as well)
That's pretty much it.
Satisfied now? I would be tremedously surprised if so... But maybe you are capable of good things in life and admit your mistake.
We shall see.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
Comments
This doesnt mean i didnt agree with you, because i do, but instead of crying and insulting the rest of the mankind, offer some improvements.
-jaded gamer #44554332-
All right mr. nitwits... I had enough of those 2 brain cells comment so here's my freaking essay you all seem to crave for...
I have called it: "The philosophy behind this" Enjoy.
One can wonder why i am fighting so hard to get things done right in the gaming industry. It's probably over the head of the common understanding of most people who think i'm just a "freak". But i fight for a cause, that is way behond the picsels that is put on your screen and no, i ain't no religious fanatics either.
I believe though that the gaming can be used for so much more then just burning your time through it. It's been a platform i have used all my life to evolve as a human being, and i will always encourage gaming experience that makes you evolve rather then those who are making you loose sense of the meaning of that word.
Finding the words in english for that is very hard for me, but i've been able through the reading of different articles over time to find the words, sometimes just by literaly quoting them when they nailed it right.
So for those who are interested to learn what's behind that fire that burns me about all the lousy games outhere who are not delivering, strap yourself in for a long dive into my brains and gut feelings...
Fun is learning in a safe-environment.
Those few words have a lot of implications. Games are mini-worlds where we can try out all sorts of ideas and possibilities, and see what works and what doesn't. Games let us fail with little penalty and then let us try again. Games teach us how to time our jumps, how to aim, how to solve puzzles, and how to manage resources. They teach us strategy: when to attack, and when to avoid a fight. It would be great if they taught a wider range of lessons, but that's up to us game designers to make it happen.
A lot of parents complain about what impact games have on children, but those parents are generally only seeing the trivial surface of the game, rather than what the game is REALLY teaching. Chess appears to be vaguely about war (it has knights and castles and kings), but it's really a game of controlling space, of reading the opponent's mind, of trickery and tactics and so on. Grand Theft Auto appears to be about shooting cops and hookers, but it's actually a game of exploration and freedom. There is value to exploring a virtual world that lets you do things you can't do in the real world. Don't be fooled by the gangster facade.
I reflected on what Starcraft taught me when i was doing competition and went up to the top 100 players on earth: an awful lot. Where to even begin? For starters, there's tactics and strategy. When should you attack and when shouldn't you? You have to understand the critical points in a match, the situations that blow the game wide open. If you are winning, you need to avoid these situations, if you're losing you need to create them. Starcraft taught me about knowing the mind of the opponent. You can't just play the odds and do the textbook-correct responses, you have to adapt and anticipate your opponent's moves.
The game is merely a medium through which you play against the other player. Some players develop skills in planning, while others develop their skills at improvisation and adapting to any situation they are thrown into. I learned first hand that when all seems lost, if you push, push, push and never give up, it's still possible to win.
And yet all that is only a tiny fraction of the lessons I've learned. Starcraft in my case was a one-on-one game, so you must rely on yourself to win. You can't mill around while your friends do the work for you. Self-reliance and continuous self-improvement is the only successful road. And yet, I also learned that no man is an island. The tournament structure has always been open to all comers, so that an undiscovered talent from Idaho who trained secretly in his basement can show up to our biggest tournament and win it all, if he has the skill. No need to qualify or be level 60 in an RPG or any of that. And yet, this mythical person never ever materialized in my 5 years of playing the game. The only way to become good is to play against others who are good. It takes a village to make a champion. You can't turn your back on the whole world because you NEED the community to improve. You must learn and train with them. It's pretty hard to do that without making some friends along the way, too.
Another very important lesson was that winning at Starcraft is a meritocracy. Your race doesn't matter. Your religion doesn't matter. The only thing that matters in a tournament is your ability to win. The community looks up to those who can win, regardless of ethnicity. There is no substitute for growing up in an environment that cares about results, rather than race. Nothing a teacher or parent could ever say measures up to that life experience about race-relations.
There are also a lot of things us Starcraft players take for granted. They are truths so self-evident, that we never talk about them because it never even occurs to us that these aren't givens. Here's a few examples:
Starcraft was so fun for me because there is so many things to learn. Looking back, these are life lessons that I couldn't do without. From the strategy of the workplace to reading the mind of others, to a sense of fairness, I am rich with reward from my gaming background.
But since a few years, that same philosophy have really started to scare me a bit. I started to think "What is World of Warcraft teaching all these people?" I've played the game for about 6 months, and went through enough reading since then to understand exactly the direction they're taking. So i have a very good idea what the game is teaching, and it's downright frightening. Unlike the uninformed parents who are afraid that GTA is going to ruin our youth, I'm not afraid of the silly facade of World of Warcraft: I'm afraid of what's it's really all about, deep down! That's a much more powerful and influencing thing than the mere surface. (Starcraft isn't about destroying your opponent base "independence day style" with a bunch of carrier either: that's just a surface, too).
So let's put the cards on the table. Here is what World of Warcraft teaches:
1. Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill. If you invest more time than someone else, you "deserve" rewards. People who invest less time "do not deserve" rewards. This is an absurd lesson that has no connection to anything I do in the real world. The 3D artist we have at work can create 10 times more value than an artist of average skill, even if the lesser artist works way, way more hours. The same is true of our star programmer. The very idea that time > skill is alien.
2. Time > skill is so fundamentally bad, that I'm still going to go on about it even though I started a new number. The "honor system" in World of Warcraft is a disaster that needs to be exposed for health and safety reasons, if nothing else. This system allows players to work their way through the ranks, starting at rank 0 and maxing out at rank 14. Winning in pvp gives you honor points, and at the end of each week, your performance is compared to that of other players, and you gain ranks based on that. Now, losing also gives you points, but not as many. The system overwhelming rewards time spent playing, rather than skill.
What is the health and safety danger I spoke of? You might think that if you waltz into this honor system, and perform better (which in this case mainly means you played longer) than everyone else on your entire server, that you would become rank 14. Not by a long shot. Your gains are capped each week, so it will take months and months to gain rank 14. Once you get up to rank 10, you are now competing against people who play the game 10 hours per day and up. There is no limit to how much a person can play, so players are driven to play every waking moment (forget having a job or social life) for fear that if they don't, some OTHER player will do so and be ahead in rank.
The idea that time > skill has gone from a merely fundamentally bad idea, to being actually dangerous, addicting people to the point of fatigue and death. No wonder China's new laws about MMOs are addressing this problem. MMO games must only award players full experience points for the first three hours of each day, half experience for the next two hours, and no experience after five hours. (Logging off for at least 5 hours will reset the system.)
3. Group > Solo. You can forget self-reliance, because you won't get far in World of Warcraft without a big guild. By design, playing alone (even if you are the best player in the world) will get you worse loot than if you always play in 5-man dungeons. If you always play in 5-man dungeons, you'll always get worse loot than if you play in 40-man raids. The player base has been hit over the head for so long with this notion of 40-man raids, that players are taking that as given. I see so many people who have been fooled into thinking this is justified, that it actually scares me. They think that you shouldn't be allowed to get good loot unless you do something with 39 other people, because that's harder. Coordinating 40 people is hard, but so is winning a Starcraft tournament, which you have to do by yourself.
Some personality types want to do things with 39 other people, but my personality type certainly doesn't. I have to wonder why the 40 person raids have good loot at all. To me, doing something yourself is far more valuable, and a much more interesting test than getting 40 people to coordinate fairly mundane tasks.
Unfortunately, the game offers no difficult solo content leading to good loot. (Note to picky readers: there is some, but it's soooo far out of whack with raid rewards that we can safely ignore it, the same way Blizzard does.) The designers must be so extraverted, that they can't fathom the introvert point of view.
4. Group > Solo. I'm not done with this yet. As an introvert, I'm pretty outraged that this game is marginalizing my entire personality type. The developers repeatedly confirm that 40-man raids deserve the most powerful items. Many of the players are brainwashed by this poor assumption, often saying "It's an MMO, of course you have to group with 40 other people do accomplish anything." Ironically, World of Warcraft was originally founded on exactly the opposite idea. The game started off by saying that EverQuest had that philosophy, and that Warcraft will not. So much for that.
Because the "real" drive behind a MMO is the persistant world and not the fact that you can play in multiplayer, (like so many mislead people think) playing by yourself in MMO is a perfectly valid thing to do. You are part of the player-driven economy. You see a living world around you with people doing their business, laughing together, and arguing. You can group with people when you like, or not if you don't feel like it. It's an experience wholly different than a single-player game, and no serious person could think otherwise.
The best way to put it is that it captures the concept of "being alone together" with other people. Going to a movie by yourself so you share the experience with the others in the audience. Going to a study hall where other people are studying, rather than staying in your room alone. There is a very big demand for the ability to "be alone together" in a shared social environment that allows grouping and social interaction, but does not force it by making almost all end-game content in the form of 40-man raids.
Warcraft and many other MMO's—maybe accidentally—hit upon this concept, and now seems spit on it and all those who appreciate it. If a Blizzard developer read this, his PR department would say they are not spitting on this play-style, but unfortunately the game design speaks louder than words. "Spit on" is exactly how I feel. But far worse is the idea that millions of people are learning that doing things on your own is bad. Albert Einstein accomplished far more in the field of physics by himself during off-time as a patent clerk than a 40-man raid of so-so physicists ever would. I want little Johnny in Idaho to learn that lesson, but he sure won't find it in World of Warcraft. 40 mundane people with a lot of time would put Albert Einstein to shame any day of the week in this game.
5) Guilds. The tools for creating and maintaining a guild in World of Wacraft seem benevolent enough. After all, they encourage cooperation. Unfortunately, they create a social situation totally alien to me in the real world: a constant "us vs them" mentality. In the real world, I am part of many different communities, and I have varying levels of influence and seniority in each. I'm fairly prominent with Starcraft and most RTS, and have a lot of influence in "outcast" gamers community, especially here in montreal. I ran some sport tournaments in restaurants called "La Cage aux Sports", and have been one of the most famous player of the dead Virtual World. All to say that i was in touch with a fair amount of different communities.
Meanwhile, in World of Warcraft, I live in a world of "guild-only events." You're either with a guild, or you're nobody to them. I can't imagine being in only one IRC (chat) channel at a time, or choosing only one gaming community, yet I can only join one guild at a time. It's a very weird social environment with the same dangers as extremist nationalism and flag-waving.
6) The Terms of Service. The very idea of using the terms of service as the de facto way to enforce a certain player-behavior goes against everything I've learned. A game should be a system of rules that allow the player to explore. If the player finds loopholes, then the game developer should fix them. It's never, ever the player's fault: it's the game developer's fault. People who currently make deals with enemy faction (Horde or Alliance ) to trade wins in battleground games are not really at fault. They are playing in a system that forces anyone who wants to be rank 14 to do exactly that. A line in the Terms of Service saying that you shouldn't behave this way changes nothing, and teaches nothing.
Or consider the humorous example of Lord Kazzak. He is an "outdoor raid boss." That means he's a big monster that wanders around the world, and you need 40 people to kill him. You don't get to go into your own instanced dungeon to fight your own personal copy of this guy; there is one wandering around the server and you all compete to kill him so you can get his good loot. When Lord Kazzak was added to the game, Blizzard also added a list of Terms of Service rules that would make your head spin. None of these rules were hard-coded; they were all "squishy" rules added on top of the actual game rules. And now for your reading enjoyment, the Lord Kazzak Official Rules of Engagement (I did not make these up; they are real!):
Here's some more things that will get you banned:
“Playing too much," using a rogue/warlock combo to lure bosses too far from their spawn points, fighting on rooftops, entering unfinished areas (why are they accessible at all?), buying gold or items on eBay (eventually the courts will probably overrule them on this), collaborating with the other faction in battlegrounds, "using terrain exploits to your advantage," player-created casinos (that merely use the in-game "/random" command), player-created bingo games, profanity (even though there is an in-game language filter, to say nothing of free speech), posting on forums about whether a guild is full of Blizzard employees, posting on the forums about why you were banned for posting about something seemingly constructive, advertising a gay and lesbian friendly guild that's a safe haven from the endless use of the words “gay” and “fag” in the general chat channels, having a name such as "JustKidding," "CmdrTaco," "TheAthiest," or "roflcopter"... and a whole lot more things, too.
These examples go on and on, but the basic idea here is that Blizzard treats the players like little children who need a babysitter. Maybe that's why i feel that this community is becoming or has become so dumb and way beyond their blind fanboiness. There are mountains of rules in the terms of service that tell you that you shouldn't do things that you totally can do in the game if you want. Why they don't just alter their design and code so you can't do these things is beyond me. But this mentality is drilled into the players to the point that they start believing that it's ok. They start believing that it's not ok to experiment, to try out anything the game allows in a non-threatening environment.
Well—that's a dangerous thing. That's the point at which the game stops being "fun" by my definition, and it's also the point at which the game can no longer teach. The power of games is that they empower a player to try all the possibilities that he can think of that the game rules allow, not that they have pages of "rules of conduct" that prevent you from creative thinking.
But we all know that World of Warcraft hasn't really stopped teaching. Although it's ability to teach is highly impaired by the entire "Terms of Service" approach, it's still teaching literally millions of people that time spent is more important than ability and that group activities are strictly superior to personal improvements and self-reliance.
This problem is so troubling, that I feel a personal need to take action. The only thing I can think to do, though, is to design an MMO that teaches the right things. Look for that on store shelves in 2012 or so.
So that's what it's all about. Nothing more, nothing less. I hope it helps you people understand what i'm trying to build in Absolum "the game", and Absolum "The Guild".
If you're waiting for War Hammer, feel free to hop by http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=15168&TabID=127912
I'm done with this thread.
/bow
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
It's probably over the head of the common understanding of most people
My, my... aren't we full of ourselves....
Fun is learning in a safe-environment.
As is learning in a dangerous environment: Skateboarding, Bungie Jumping, Sky Surfing, etc..
or not learning in a passable environment: Drinking, Drugs, sex, etc...
A fair game does not give material advantages to one player over the other
<sigh> having taken more than a few classes in military science (wargame theory and logistics being the most important here), I can tell you that a game can be perfectly matched at the beginning (chess, checkers, etc.) and eventually evolve into unfairness and inevitable victory for one side. Inversely, there are games that start out with one side at a disadvantage (Fox and Geese) but generally evolve into a more fair contest and inevitable victory for one side or the other.
MMOs are unique in this regard. Since even if the game was completely twitch based with perfectly balanced gear and abilities, players that had been with the game longer would have access to more resources and therefore more options. Furthermore, the player that had been with such a game longer would understand all of those options thoroughly. I may not be the greatest player of Street Fighter on earth, but I bet I could beat someone that had only been playing the game for two hours. This would be like letting your chess opponent take five turns before you even take one. As long as the game mechanics stretch over a long period of time, there will always be advantages for early adopters.
Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill.
Persistence and patient can be skills too. If someone stops 3 feet from gold, does that make the find of the person who didn't stop any less meaningful?
Group > Solo. You can forget self-reliance,
This is just common sense. Ten miners are more effective than one miner. 100 Bandits are more of a threat than 5 bandits. Ancient and Medieval warfare were largely practices of attrition. And what periods of actual history are fantasy games based on?
Or maybe you're just pissed because the rewards in most MMOs are distributed evenly and automatically. At any rate, no one is "self made." I don't care what Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche say.
Some personality types want to do things with 39 other people, but my personality type certainly doesn't.
Then why are you playing massively Multiplayer games?
Unfortunately, the game offers no difficult solo content leading to good loot.
See my "Group > Solo" response for your answer to this one. A group of people is capable of accomplishing more than any individual. It just makes sense that the uber monsters that take a group to destroy would be in possession of uber loot.
Because the "real" drive behind a MMO is the persistant world and not the fact that you can play in multiplayer
Under this definitions of persistence, an empty movie lot would be "persistent." Likewise, every single player game with an ending would be "persistent." Given, the players in most MMOs don't have the ability to leave any significant mark on the game world, it's the other players that define the world as persistent.
they create a social situation totally alien to me in the real world: a constant "us vs them" mentality.
I take it from this quote that you:
1) don't live in the U.S.
2) were home schooled and never experienced Junior High and High school
You also get a healthy dose of "Us vs. Them" in the workplace and public politics. This is the default mentality of conflict and conflict is a defining feature of the human experience.
I too am a "Jaded gamer". I have not experienced a truly fun MMO since Asheron's Call. DAOC I admit was slightly fun but nothing in the caliber as AC. AC was truly a game, and like they say - once you play AC you can never find a game that satisfies you cause its just that fun.
There are so many things that upset me and you have just hit the nail perfectly in many of these posts that I really am trying to figure out what to reply to first; you're tone, I admit, is a bit pompous - but that shows that you are indeed well educated and that youre no bimbo like the rest of these...ugh....assholes. Yeah, cry flame - I dont care. These idiodic, nonsense posts (you know which ones I'm talking about) that you morons put up in "response" to an obviously thought out, intelligent, and passionate post just BOGGLES me. There are so many idiodic posts that I cannot and will not quote them all. Really people, come up with a CONSTRUCTIVE post for once. The only thing that you serve to do is hurt yourselves. I am really appalled - you would think a group of people that have interest in the same activity would work together, but instead many of them turn into complete idiots spewing useless sh*t. No wonder the gaming companies take full advantage of people like you; you fall right into the pit of shooting down great ideas like the ones that are posted above. In short, shame on you. Shame on you.
Xyang, I am also extremley ticked off at how the industry is going. I am not a proffessional developer, by far (my forte is definitly not math) but I have much experience in playing MMO's since the early days of AC. You have hit the nails on the head with WoW and current games - they promote intense competition for items that simply rot the game; the game, which is meant to be fun, becomes a second job as everyone is caught up in the race for the better items.
Then we get the usual remark I see posted COUNTLESS of times in threads or in people's sigs; 8 million people are happy playing WoW. But think of this -
Are you REALLY happy?
Take away all of your die hard support for the game and take a look at it, if you can, with an unbiased approach. What are you really doing when you log into the game? Is it really fun? All that you do is grind, farm, grind, farm. You do these repetivive tasks over and over again. I was in the game in WoW that one day, and I realized just that; it isnt fun. Its NOT FUN! It becomes like he said, a SECOND JOB. It is not fun. Next time you log in, ask yourself while youre killing that boss; Am I having fun, or is this like coming home to just go to another job?
WoW was also successfull because it was the first MMO with a
1) Recognized name in the gaming world
2) A competent company making the game without any major bugs in release
3) Excellent Advertising
4) Because of the first 3 reasons, many people who did not play MMO's joined in on WoW - so they never heard of the MMO before. Thus, the "WOW" factor of simultaneously playing with other people kick in and you get hooked.
Then theres the PvP and the rulesets to make it "fair". War is NEVER fair. I Dont want to stand next to a dwarf when Im an orc and not be able to attack him in case I get "banned". I wanna smash his head open! Darktide was the best time I have EVER had gaming - it was so brutal, but thats what made it so fun. Now when you die, theres no death penalty. Whats the fun in fighting if your not afraid of death? You become a ghost. A GHOST?? thats it? Give me a break. The Honor system like he says failed and is completley moronic in nature - the more time you spend killing people the higher you raise in rank. It is not dependant on player skill, its dependant on how much time you put in. And the people who only get the real reward out of it are the no lifers who are truly in their mother's basement.
And finally what jaded me the most was character customization. The class system is one of the worst things put into these games. You think you are so cool in your warrior - guess what? The guy next to you has the EXACT same abilities save for his race and guess what.....you guessed it. His items. That level 70 super sword hes wearing that he grinded for six months every day for, you need to grind for as well. A game based purely on itemization is inherently flawed. Back in the old games like AC, you could fully customize your character by choosing if he used an axe, with war magic, or with healing magic, while shooting a bow. So you put thought into what skills you level up. However now you are reduced to a clone, a clone with a million others competing to become the "best" with the items. They say classes promote people working together - but like the OP said, what if you dont want to work together with people sometimes? Why should you be punishe dif you want to do what YOU want to do? And you dont need to be pushed to work together as a group - players, if they really wanted to, will group together on their own, without some developer prodding them with a fork. And dont give me the talent tree sh*t. The talent tree is a joke. I would even venture to say that old SWG when it first came out was better than this WoW trash.
I could go on, but my fingers are getting tired. Cheers to you Xyang, this is a tough crowd, but there are good people in this forum that listen to you. We are out there, we're just muffeled by these...leeches. Sad really. So yes, I'm definitly Jaded, and will be until a good, FUN game comes out that actually makes me go "yeaaaah this is cool" instead of falling asleep in front of my computer screen.
Oh but i know that dear Ghost... You and the majority of intelligent people that read but actually don't post is the crowd i'm adressing myself to. So you can keep hope that there is "at least" one active developer living and breathing everything you have craved to play for so long.
How can i be anything but pompous when you see the type of idiots i have to deal with on a daily basis
Like those 2 less then nothing (Recant and jimmy whatever..) who think made an "intelligent" argument against me, while you just can't make an argument as much as you try, to defend a pile of rubbish. No matter how good you are in the choice of words you use: You have no case.
It is that kind of wannabe that i must face in this industry "every single fucking day". Those few jerks don't have much impact here on a forum beside pissing off people with their 5 cents theory or simply given most of us a good laugh. But when you realise those same twits are in charge and the one saying "yes or no" to your project, let me tell you that i have "absolutely no consideration" with those morons. I would be glad in fact to face them in any real life situation and solve this the good old ways... But this wouldn't be civilized right? Today, civilized mean hiding behind a computer to throw people shit without even considering that the person you are throwing the shit at, is that same person that represent the salvation of the industry you seem to love. So they can kiss my ass.
As for you ghost and everybody else reading this, without taking an active part because you don't want to deal with those idiots, well i'm glad to be a flag ship that will stand against mediocrity in gaming for you all
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
You surely are good at making assumptions. My life is great and rewarding, but let me replace you in the context for the purpose of this topic:
I've stopped playing MMO's a year ago. Thanks for the advice but i wouldn't be posting here if i was satisfied with the market.. I would be playing it.
As far as developing my own MMO, i've been doing just that since 1997. But guess what: Money don't grow out of trees, and by the shit you can see on the market, they obviously don't care much about the quality of the game play you provide. The gaming industry is a big incestuous whore, where you need to lick the right ass in order to get your funds. Doesn't even matter if you got talent or not... (Ubi Soft being the best example of this. Just make your research and come back after once you know a bit more about what you're talking about)
Finally, you are a complete moron. The reasons why i spend my precious time on some gaming board is EXACTLY to help the gaming industry to grow. The "jaded gamer" post is certainly not my main one. I don't remember how many times i've went to different MMO games and plastered their board with awesome ideas that could be implemented rather easily. A few where taken, the majority of course wasn't. (for the reasons that i described above, not because it wasn't a superior concept)
So for having contributed in the shadow of this industry for the past 12 years, i give myself the right to come here and spit at those who keep dragging it down at the bottom: Either by encouraging stupid products, or by making them. It's a duty that i take very seriously since the gaming industry is not only my bread and butter, but also my greatest passion in life. I have a tendency to be very protective of those i love, and it's no different when it gets on a philosophic level.
One more post like yours and i'll have to post an essay though....
Oh..I see now.
You are jaded because your attempts to make an online game has failed and hurt your ego. I think your mental health is suspect and it would be wise to log out and seek professional help. Your apparent emotional attachment to either online games or online forums..or both...is unhealthy.
What is unhealthy is trailer park trash such as yours, who completely waste my time with their stupidity. What makes you think i have "failed" in my attempt of making that ground breaking MMO? It's in construction and doing well. The only thing i've said, is that without the money, it will take much more time. But i ain't a quitter. My sole attempt at trying to make a peasant like you understand where i'm coming from is the best proof of that!
I'm a gaming humanist... Maybe the LAST gaming humanist on earth!
so when you "save" enough money to get your game to come out what year will it be? and will u be able to play it when it comes live? cuz seems to me like making a game ALL by yourself is going to take decades let alone raising enough money to get it going...Of course, it would be ludicrous to even think about making a video game by myself, let alone a MMO. Fortunately enough, i'm not the only soul on this earth left that is doing games for the "right" reasons, so the team is building up as the project advance. The good thing with people working with an ideology behind their mind, is that we can make the statement that the game will be release "when it's ready", and actually do just that. Those words doesn't mean anything in the mouth of big corporates and to the other extreme, wannabes.
So you ask when, and i'm tempted to say "when it's ready". But seing the current pace we got now, i would bet my bottom dollar it's going to be done by 2012. The fact that we must work on other gaming project at the same time to fund the primary one surely slow things down. But hey, i'm in the early 30's and most people are between 25-30 as well so, nobody's afraid to die before completing the project
Since we work with the great Unreal 3 engine, it should still be graphically viable and most importantly: Playable on pretty much any machine too.
We're always looking for great talents that are in this business to produce great games first, and of course, making a living out of it. Although it involves moving in montreal, which that's the reason i don't broadcast it all over the place, and only on local web site. I know most of the best elements in Ubi and EA montreal so, it's not that hard to find burnt out employees and recruit them on the project
Those people would prolly had left the gaming industry completely if it wasn't for us maintaining our super high quality standards...
So i guess i have more then answered to your question just there. Feel free to pass by when you are curious and wanting more!
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
Your introduction tells me you use to be a janitor (or maybe even a mail worker) at one of these gaming companies. You go on telling us how you seen the dark face of creating video games and that you're disgusted by it. Weren't you suppose to be sweeping! You lazy bas.. uh.. erm...
The next couple paragraphs are just opinions that aren't even in-depth - just more squabble by someone who's telling people they're basically wrong for judging a game because they never cleaned the floors in a gaming company. I'm sorry on behalf of most people who do not have the experience you do.
The last paragraph is what gave me a little smile, unlike the rest of this rant by another joe. You proceed to judge 8 million people (not myself included) to the 300lbs obese man that likes his McDonalds! Just like I told those damn Anti-Amercians, we are free to choose what we do and eat!
Hmm ok...
Sorry to disapoint you but for your information: You can't work in a gaming company here and be a janitor. Janitors are not allowed to really see what's going on, because they have to clean when everybody is gone... Besides, they are not even hired by Ubi Soft, but by the company that owns the building and "rent" the 3rd 4th and 5th floor to ubi soft. Nice try
As for the rest of your comment well, i said everything i had to say about that. Just show that you're not that pathetic to only base your argument around a few lines of what i said, and take the "whole discussion" into consideration. Otherwise, get lost.
Thank you.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
Gotta admit Xyang, you're a very skillful troll. Your posts have just the right dash of hubris to get the unsuspecting riled up. I've been down this road. I've got the T-shirt. And the only reason I'm feeding you is because I'm bored. Anyway, down to business....
Like those 2 less then nothing (Recant and jimmy whatever..) who think made an "intelligent" argument against me, while you just can't make an argument as much as you try, to defend a pile of rubbish. No matter how good you are in the choice of words you use: You have no case.
And your rebuttal to my points was.... What exactly? I see the ad hominem attack. I see something that looks like a conclusion.... But where's the support. Man! I hope you don't write code the way you write arguments.
It is that kind of wannabe that i must face in this industry "every single fucking day".
Wannabe what? I wannabe rich. I wannabe in porno movies. I wannabe cool. Mainly because I'm none of those things and they seem desirable to me.
Are you talking about game development. If I want to make a game, I'll just grab a copy of Code Warrior and a couple of artists. Nothing major about that. Hell, half the people on this forum could make a simple puzzle game or MUD on their own in less than a week. And yes, I said MUD in less than a week. As I recall, there was a 16K MUD competition as well as a flood of "not quite" stock DikuMUDs that proliferated during the 90's.
You must be talking about AAA game development. Sorry, I don't want that. Working 16 hour days, 7 days a week is nothing that I want to be bothered with. Especially when you consider that you work on the game for 5 years only to see it in the bargain bin 3 months after it goes gold. Do the math 100 developers * 16 hours * 1825 days = a game that gets beaten within 24 hours of release and has multiple full walkthroughs available within 72 hours. Interestingly enough, those numbers stay roughly the same for RPGs since the people writing the walkthroughs are using hacks and cheating devices. Thank you Game Shark!
Of course, it would be ludicrous to even think about making a video game by myself, let alone a MMO.
That pretty much depends on the game you're producing. There's this guy named Kenta Cho who makes some of the best old school shooters ever made, all by himself, and for free. There's this really awesome RPG that was made by a Husband and Wife team called Mount & Blade, maybe you've heard of it. The Nintendo DS hit Brain Age was made in 3 months with a team of less than 10 people. Even Minions of Mirth, an MMO, had less than 10 people actually involved with the development of the game.
Then again, You haven't given us any reason to believe that you actually make games for a living. Maybe if you gave us a job title or pointed us to a finished game with your name in the credits....
Yeah sure... I'll give you my real name on a public forum like this
I'm not that desperate about recognition...
So you say i'm a troll, and you are bored. You are making a shit load of assumptions, which seems to be either the fruit of your imagination (which would prove you got at least something running in that pea brain of yours) or you are simply looking in the mirror, and describing the kind of loosers that you are in detail. That's called: Projection. Elementary dear Watson...
You definitely sound more like a troll then anyone else in this board. But that's what troll do: Write out of boredom, because they can't find anything better to do with their sorry life. Are you actually fighting for a cause? Are you actually ready to DIE for what you're saying here? Well guess what: I AM! So come back when you are ready to put your life on the line before opening your stinking mouth. Because as for myself, i'm ready to put everything i have on the line when i'm defending life principle. In this case "using gaming as a personal way to grow as a human being".
The gaming platform can be so much more then the current junk food and be used for the evolution of humanity. I believe in that since i was a teenager, and never stopped believe it either. If you're intelligent enough, you can use principle that you can find in "great games", (not piece of junk like WoW) to evolve as a human being. But i guess all of this is over your head huh? Troll don't need to evolve. They just have to copy paste the best flame they have found in their hours of trolling on the internet and throw it at anyones face since they can't speak with their heart and soul. You're pathetic. And to think people like you will eventually reproduce and share those values with your future dumb kids
More rubbish to populate our planet... What a shame.
I'm making valid argumentation, based on my extensive experience in the gaming industry. All you can do is pissing vinegar, and based on what background exactly?... Yeah, nothing. That's what i thought. I just want to point out that although guys like Will Wright don't agree with my tone, they do agree with my overall philosophy. They just aren't as angry as me and more laid back.
So the simple fact that you fail to see what i'm trying to explain here just proves that you're completely clueless. Because i have yet to find any good game designer in this industry that doesn't agree with those principles i have illustrated. About that "bitch!" Now of course, you'll confort yourself by making projection about yourself that i must be a troll and all that bull shit. Well, the first thing you must learn in life to be successfull, is to learn beside "who" you're walking. You must be very poorly surrounded to threat a genius like me the way you do. But have fun with your mediocre crew anyway...
If your looking for proof of my accomplishment, take a number. You're not the first and certainly not the last one to ask that. It just proves that at the end, you "know deep down inside" that i'm right. You just need a "name on a credit" to validate it. That rest my case with your kind.
About those games you named, they might be good or not. I didn't tried them. One thing i know for sure is that there's so much you can accomplish with 2-3 people. It's not a matter of skills, it's a matter of "time". I don't code myself, i'm a game designer, not a programmer nor a 3D artist. I have my handful already working on 3 different projects game mecanics and lore. More then that and i wouldn't have any time left to keep parasites like you entertained in my thread
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
If you are a game designer, then I can only guess that these are bargain bin games - or you are overruled in your design 'ideas'.
There are a billion different games out there on different platforms and systems, with (tens?) of thousands of game designers the world over.
Less than 5% are ever any good, and less than 1% are classics that are still players.
Sure, if you worked on games, good for you - but it just goes to show how far removed you are from the people you are creating for, which leads me to my original comment.
As said before many a time 'screenshot or it didnt happen'
Bye now.
Xyang,
You've got your head so far up your own ass, you should take up a new career as a pretzel impersonator.
You carp on about the lack of respect that the designers of MMORPG's have for gamers then set out to call members of an MMORPG board morons etc. So effectively, you are demonstrating the same lack of respect you were railing at originally.
One man's meat is another man's poison. Accept it. Just because you can't find a game which ticks all your boxes, you don't have the right to challenge others for enjoying the games they play.
You state that you aren't being elitist and that anyone thinking so is only scratching at their own insecurities. In the same breath, you allude to having a great personality.
Right, well now I've stooped to your level, I may as well conclude by calling you a complete assgoblin.
No doubt, you will now wish to post a sneering response, questioning my intellect. If it makes you happy or more likely, if it gives you some form of gratification, knock yourself out.
No actually, i've said enough. I'm now enjoying myself laughing at how blind people thinks the world has no colors.
It's the burden of those who see to deal with the ignorance of those who don't.
So keep telling yourself that i make garbage games and that i'm just a troll with too much time on his hand. Whatever floats your boat. It's surely more conforting for narrow minded people like the 2 posters above to think that the world is flat, and that because they are morons, that no great people like myself can exist in this world.
Once again, keep telling yourself that you're my equal if it helps you sleep at night. The awekening will hurt soon enough...
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
This thread is very distasteful, offensive, and all the major points that were outlined at the beginning somehow were contradicted by the very same person who proposed them.
This is in response to the original message that started this thread.
Get over yourself. You are an individual but just not that special. WoW is better than you give it credit. Warhammer will not be as good as you think.
Now a general response to the other few Xyang posts I read.
If I lived my life as you, I would make changes immediately, because there are some issues there that need to be dealt with. The first is attitude. Stop running around calling the work of others crap, especially since they could school you and they are the successful. Let go of the "me vs the world" attitude.
Im afraid you certainly aren't my equal, you aren't even close sunshine - Im afraid i, quite literally, own people like you - and you are one of the bottom feeders that lines my pocket on a day in and day out basis.
A 32 year old game designer from Montreal, Im sorry but that is so precious. If you hold your breath long enough and turn purple does that make you think people like me will actually listen and give two hoots about you and 'what you stand for', even though that's not even original.The fact you need to vent your spleen just makes it even more sweet as i see your little wormlike body wriggle on a big fishing hook, a bit like the child who thinks because he shouts loudest in his playgroup, that he is automatically 'the leader'
No matter how much you prattle on about who or what you are - you aren't even close - and you will always provide people like me an endless sense of amusement.
In my own opinion, which to be frank is worth more than yours judging the previous posts of, well, lets just say 'special child tantrums', you have bias, you have absolutely no ground to tell anyone their opinion is worth less than yours. The fact you work as part of the industry automatically disqualifies you from any kind of opinion, the fact you have seen part of the process doesnt mean you see the whole, and if you take the individual parts and quiz them, it shows that you are so far from being right its amusing.
You see the world as flat. You see the world without colour. You don't see what everyone else sees, as your own bile colours everything, your own bias changes everything - to the point that you missed the point a long long time ago. You have just seen part of a large industry from one perspective, from one small pidgeonholed little area. You don't have a clue and seem to concrete it with every further posting.
Of course you are more than welcome to refute this and show us what different angles you see, and why things are different - some experiences or examples would be great, or situations to at least show the general public on this forum why they should believe the 7 pages of replied to hot air you have expelled so far, as opinion is one thing, but opinion stated as fact needs to be backed up by evidence.
I rest my case, your honour.
Of course you aren't elitist or have an inflated opinion of yourself. I certainly won't be losing any sleep. Why do you think people would want to bother using you as a benchmark ?
Should we have a poll to see how many people would aspire to be you ?
You've had your flame. Mission accomplished. That was all you ever wanted so there doesn't appear to be any need for you to stay. Have a nice life.
I think Xyang is interesting. I have initially discarded his DOOM & GLOOM approach, but reading from the reactions of other peoples, I think he hits something I didn't initially saw.
Of course, this come from a lowly/no life Game Designer of 32 in Quebec city! Even lowlier by some standards!
Especially that I am nearly 33! ROFL.
Nonetheless, I support you Xyang, welcome to my world! I see that you despite raiding, maybe not as much as I did, but I guess this make us brothers in a way or another! Haha.
Xyang 1
Others 0
Please proceeds!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
ROFL.
See, the world resolves around Québec city...or maybe NYC! Montreal's been closer, he is superior!
PS: Is there any trace of sunshine in UK? I heard that the last time the sun was spotted in UK it was in the 1800ish, during the war against Napoleon!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
After following this little thread, I think I might change my signature to something like: "my post is best"
And seriously, in this thread, my post is the best one! lol
Seems like Xyang ignored me and didn't reply... so let me summarize and restate:
1. MMOs today suck. agreed.
2. Xyang, if you are going to appeal to yourself as an authority in a debate, then you got to back it up and post info about yourself. If you don't want to prove you are a big deal in a public forum, that's fine... but you can't really appeal to it as an arguement point without proving it. So if you are a big deal, post some pictures! OR just argue the content. But without some proof, my default / initial position is that you clean toilets or something... If you want your position/history to mean something in an arguement, then you prove it. (I'm not being mean in saying that... still listening / waiting for the reply)
3. Put your money where your mouth is. IF someone else is paying for you to develop your ideas, then you are not taking any risks. In other words, if you are still an employee, then you are not taking risks... someone else is. Perhaps that is the source of your discontent? Discontent is actually a good thing. Let it motivate you to take risks and move towards being the boss/owner yourself. That's cool.
The only real judge is the market and your wealth or lack thereof. Being super-smart, (even IF you are), is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is money. IF your ideas are so good, and you got some balls to go with it, then you will leave your enslaved employee position (if you are still an employee), get some money behind your ideas, develop it, and rule the world. All talk 'in a forum' is really irrelevant and meaningless....
Yeah sure... I'll give you my real name on a public forum like this.
No one's asking your name peaches, we're asking for a job title / description or the title of a game that you worked on to completetion. Oh wait.... You said you were a "game designer." That's not exactly a position that you get straight out of college. maybe you could point to a game that you worked on as a team member before you dropped into the HMFIC position....
Yeah, I didn't think so.
But that's what troll do: Write out of boredom, because they can't find anything better to do with their sorry life.
Wrong. A troll is someone that diliberately makes outrageously antagonizing and offensive posts in order to get attention.
Are you actually ready to DIE for what you're saying here? Well guess what: I AM!
So in a world full of poverty, disease, pollution, and random senseless violence, you choose to die in the fight against shitty video games....
That's quite possibly the most pitiful thing I've ever heard.
I'm making valid argumentation, based on my extensive experience in the gaming industry.
A rather dubious statement considering that:
1) you haven't supported your conclusions with any evidence, antecdotal or otherwise.
2) failed to rebuttal any counterpoints in any meaningful way.
3) Still have not shown even the slightest proof that you actually work in the video game industry.
30 - Love, your serve.
Hey Airhead. Sorry if i didn't answer the other post directly, but i thought all my post combine had already answered it. Since you came back for more, well i'll give you more.
1. Ok, your eyes are open. Good start.
2. That's really funny. As if posted picture of myself or anything like that would make any difference?? By me showing papers to you, along with every proof in the world that i've been in the credit of some major games, would really change your opinion about what i'm saying?? If that's the case, well i don't have the word in english to describe it but that's beyond pathetic. Cause the argument would remain the same, but "just" because it would have a corporate stamp beside it, you would "suddendly" consider what i'm saying for a valid argument instead of hot air?
No thanks. Sorry but this would be a never ending game, because no matter how many proof i post here, there will always be some idiot to claim that he "knows" it's not me anyway. You clearly don't know how popular people like myself has to deal with wannabes like Johnny Cait Sith who "thinks" they have 10% of my knowledge or gaming culture and even talents. Sorry to disapoint you Johnny nothing, but it only takes one dude like me to keep 10 people at the bottom of human creation like you at bay. I must say that you are very good at copy pasting others flaming argument, but your junior stuff is the only hot air in this thread, and it has bad breath.
3. I guess you missed a few of my post. I'm definitely not an employee anymore and working for myself, with a small team (around 20 people) that see the gaming industry as i do. Clearly, i'm putting alot of my money in the project as well, because i have to keep small projects running in order to give the necessary milk to the big one. So far, there hasn't been a single dime that didn't come from myself or my teams pocket. There was a few investors, (it's not that hard to find with a game such as ours) but they we're either asking us to prostitute our work, or to rush the project into impossible delay. We're all cool with that by the way, which makes us way above the rest of the little and big company who sold out the first chance they had to.
Finally, i don't think money is the only power in this world. This is of course the main opinion of the people who are trying to refute my argument constantly. I believe that we'll conceive, to make in hell of this industry for us a heaven. A brave new world, a promise land, a fortitude of hearts and minds. Until i see this gaming world ours, i'll turn the darkness into light and i'll guide the blind. A man who wants to move a mountain, begins by carrying away small stones... And that's exactly what i'm doing here, every time i come to fight against the lies of corporate that a lot of you people have been brain washed with over the years.
Regards.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
Hehe well... I never thought one second this debate would turn around politics and ethicity but Johnny Doe seems to make it sound like it is with his puny comment about montreal. He's probably not aware of this but Montreal will become the "capital city" of video games and multimedia in the next 5 years, so if he likes to defend those corporate friends so much, you should show a little respect for a city that will be their head quarters...
As far as the score, it's more Xyang 10 vs Others 0, but i'll accept your verdict anyhow. A win is a win
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
ROFL. I pick on 1 UK guy who was trashing Montreal (althought Montreal is an ugly city and deserve trashing, only folks from nearby cities are allowed to trash it). I even supposed that maybe, maybe NYC is the center of the world...err...yeah right, NYC is Canadian after all, not American at all!
The fact that 1 guy from Atlanta, come and bash that silly Montreal guy...yeah, that is a Canadian take over! Why limit ourselves at the US and UK? The World! The World! Nothing less!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Ok so let's see... I'll provide a few title even with an insider analysis and at the end, you're still going to piss vinegar.
I've worked on:
*** Pool of Radiance II (Could had been a good game, if it wasn't for an aweful bug at the installation that was "known" by Ubi but they decided to launch it anyway. Result: The bug was removing your reg edit, and about 10 000 of people had to re-format their hardrive...)
*** Tarzan (An easy to do license from Walk Disney for kids of around 6-8 years old. Ok hear this: At some point, every game designers have to actually play their game during a project (duh!) and there was a level i couldn't complete because the jump was too steep. Then i go see the producer to tell him "hey man, if I can't do that jump along with a dozen of testers, how do you expect a 7 years old kid to do it?? His answer was: Life is not fair......
Another good example of Ubi crappyness.
*** NHL 2004-2005 (That's my only experience with EA. 2 years, but averaging so many hours that it almost cost me my 6 years relationship with my beloved girl friend. Anyway... They we're "decent" titles if you like sports game.)
*** Shadowbane.... (Yeah, and not particularly proud of it. You have to realise though that those guys in Austin Texas "Wolf Pack" who we're calling the shot on the final design we're the worst piece of junk and complete noob i've ever seen! It even beats the MMORPG forums!!! That says it all...
*** Myst series along with Uru (This one was fun. Great team, great people. Rand (Atrus) is the man!)
*** Splinter Cell (Well the first one was good, and all the sequel after the third one are just over milking a dead lisence)
*** Far Cry (I've done most of the map and actually, this game i'm proud of.)
*** King Kong (That's the last title i've been working on. Was great to meet Peter Jacksons during the production too. I won't say it's a great game, but if you consider it for what it is a "movie game", i think it's one of the best in it's category so far. X-Box 360 port was a complete piece of crap. It looks better on the PS2 and regular X-Box as well)
That's pretty much it.
Satisfied now? I would be tremedously surprised if so... But maybe you are capable of good things in life and admit your mistake.
We shall see.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...