Mike Capps On The Game Biz

[WarTourist]

Is he saying the suits should be the Producers?

In that quote, I believe he's saying that you should know something isn't working before the game is finished.

There was a great GDC lecture a few years ago where a guy said the goal of prototyping is to fail as quickly as possible. You want to know something isn't going to be any fun as soon as possible.

 

[toniglandyl]

You're reading WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much into that. He's talking about teams, not titles. Unreal wasn't over when Legend did Unreal 2, nor was UT2003 when DE did it.

As a one team company (pre-merger) Epic wanted to try something new with Gears. As a two team company (post-merger) we got the best of both worlds, a new franchise and the one that attracted us all to Epic in the first place.

ok, thanks for clearing that up.
So I'm still waiting, long live Unreal ! and the nali cows, and the priests, and all what made us gather up here !

but I still find Mr. Capps a bit confusing. Why don't you get interviewed ?

 

[Deapblade]

Blizzard makes games of such quality that even people who usually don't play games, play and enjoy their games with the same intensiveness as gamers do. That is something they have never achieved. Until one of their games, reach the heights that all the games of Blizzard do, by standard, I would like him to shut up.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

What is that point of your post?

I doubt that Blizzard games previous to WoW had any kind of outrageous numbers of player (by that I mean I'm sure they were fairly standard PC gamer numbers).

What Mike said makes sense, it's hard to see how Blizzard has been so successful over the years when they so willingly work on a game for three years and then just throw it in the trashcan. Anyone that has been following them for a while knows that they have done it more than once or twice.

It's very important to note that 10 million subscribers or 2 million Battle.net registrations does not translate to those same numbers in players online as they would have you believe. A lot of people play WoW, no doubt, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing for gaming.

 

[Hourences]

Unreal 3 being on the necris homeland could be great ! all the artistic possibilities, nano-black infected vegetation, animals, or even 100% nano-black life forms ! seeing some necrification process would be awesome too (no need to remake the Quake 4 scene though) !

And how exactly would that be Unreal? Unreal is about the Nalis, colorful and atmospheric places on some strange planet, etc. I dont see nano black tentacle growing goths who have a weak for turkish buildings fit into that, but that might just be me

I would love to see another Unreal but but on the other hand, I'd rather not see U3... I dont believe that a true successor can be made, and it will never live up to everyone's expectations...

 

[Raynor.Z]

To live up expectations is not to have any expectations

 

[Selerox]

Unreal's ****ed

You're reading WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much into that. He's talking about teams, not titles. Unreal wasn't over when Legend did Unreal 2, nor was UT2003 when DE did it.

The disaster that was Unreal 2.
The disaster that was UT2003.

Great examples there. Fills us with confidence

 

[toniglandyl]

And how exactly would that be Unreal? Unreal is about the Nalis, colorful and atmospheric places on some strange planet, etc. I dont see nano black tentacle growing goths who have a weak for turkish buildings fit into that, but that might just be me

I would love to see another Unreal but but on the other hand, I'd rather not see U3... I dont believe that a true successor can be made, and it will never live up to everyone's expectations...

well it's part of the Unreal universe, and look at it that way :
you're prisonner 42 who survived the crash on a planet... you see necris stuff. planet was originally Nali, but necris came to get the planet (see war of the world / independance day style scenario) so you try to save the doomed planet or at least save yourself.
mutated nalis (with only 2 arms !!!) and all, that would be cool.

and I'm not fond of turkish structures neiter

and no sequel isn't a solution. sure, at least you don't have a deception, but you also can't get satisfied !

 

[Hourences]

How can something be Unreal when it doesn't look like it?

Isn't that the same as simply designing a new IP? Which basically gets you Gears of War? Same idea (very roughly), other looks and style.

The beauty and charm of Unreal is in what it is, remove that very thing, and you do not have Unreal anymore. Unreal IS the nali, and Unreal IS about temple environments and color. There's nothing left if you remove those because the gameplay sure wasn't anything new or mindblowing, nor was the story...

A nali is actually already mutated, as design wise it is a human(oid) that is slightly mutated (four arms), so a Mutated Nali would be a mutated mutated humanoid That's way too illogical.

And as far as I am concernced, the necris are not unreal but an utterly random addition. The fact that they suddenly have a key role in UT3 makes it even more utterly random.

 

[hal]

And how exactly would that be Unreal? Unreal is about the Nalis, colorful and atmospheric places on some strange planet, etc. I dont see nano black tentacle growing goths who have a weak for turkish buildings fit into that, but that might just be me

Yes, I totally agree with this. The thing that attracted me to Unreal was that sense of wonderment and exploration. The castles and Nali were a great blend of fantasy and sci-fi. There was something interesting about being a lowly prisoner escaping the wreckage of your prison ship with little more than a health pack and a scavenged weapon that was a total contrast to the fps games that had come before it.

Unreal 2 missed the mark on all those counts, and instead wandered right into the middle of sci-fi mainstream where it became mostly boring.

A properly done Unreal 3 would be awesome.

 

[_Lynx]

I'd like to see U3 as an enhanced U1 remake.

 

[elmuerte]

A properly done Unreal 3 would be awesome.

Or a Nali spin-off: Nali Adventures (Mike, here's your chance for an adventure game )

 

[suibhne]

I doubt that Blizzard games previous to WoW had any kind of outrageous numbers of player (by that I mean I'm sure they were fairly standard PC gamer numbers).

Do you recognize the names "Warcraft," "Starcraft", and "Diablo"? The only Epic title that even approaches their worldwide success is Gears. Heck, it's not much of an exaggeration to credit Starcraft with jump-starting the entire South Korean economy, and it went on to become the best-selling PC game ever (until being dethroned by The Sims a few years ago). Gears of War's lifetime sales have only just caught up with Warcraft III's pre-orders from back in 2002 (and that was a PC-only title).

Despite your sureness, those are not "fairly standard PC gamer numbers". Every one of Blizzard's games since the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans has been a market-defining smash success.

What Mike said makes sense, it's hard to see how Blizzard has been so successful over the years when they so willingly work on a game for three years and then just throw it in the trashcan. Anyone that has been following them for a while knows that they have done it more than once or twice.

Do you think shipping those games would've translated to even greater success for Blizzard? In any case, as someone who has apparently "been following them for a while", why do you believe that Blizzard gained no value from those projects?

It's very important to note that 10 million subscribers or 2 million Battle.net registrations does not translate to those same numbers in players online as they would have you believe.

Warcraft 3, released in 2002, still posts over 250,000 unique players per week, and frequently far higher. No UT title has achieved more than a tiny fraction of that player activity, even within the first few months after launch. In fact, I'm conservatively understating those numbers because, frankly, I'm too lazy to pore through Battlenet's stats to substantiate the actual numbers, which appear to be astonishingly higher. Let's just close with the point that Warcraft 3's smallest server hosts more officially-sanctioned tournament players per week than the entire communities for UT99, UT2k4, and UT3 put together - and that doesn't count any non-tournament play, which dwarfs the official tournaments.

 

[Mastame]

Do you think shipping those games would've translated to even greater success for Blizzard? In any case, as someone who has apparently "been following them for a while", why do you believe that Blizzard gained no value from those projects?

That's a really good point. I think that Blizzard as a studio has had to make some very difficult decisions in abandoning projects - projects that wouldn't have been the games they were believed to be, games that wouldn't have lived up to Blizzard's standards.
Now it's one thing to say that they're just doing something wrong in the development process; that they suck as a studio for doing the wrong things, making the wrong decisions and making the wrong design choices.
It's another thing to say that Blizzard has just several times realised that certain games they were working on, would in the end probably just not have lived up to Blizzard's standards, hence they would have decided to abandon a project as it would just ''not be worthy''.

 

[Angel_Mapper]

In that quote, I believe he's saying that you should know something isn't working before the game is finished.

There was a great GDC lecture a few years ago where a guy said the goal of prototyping is to fail as quickly as possible. You want to know something isn't going to be any fun as soon as possible.

That makes more sense.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Do you recognize the names "Warcraft," "Starcraft", and "Diablo"? The only Epic title that even approaches their worldwide success is Gears. Heck, it's not much of an exaggeration to credit Starcraft with jump-starting the entire South Korean economy, and it went on to become the best-selling PC game ever (until being dethroned by The Sims a few years ago). Gears of War's lifetime sales have only just caught up with Warcraft III's pre-orders from back in 2002 (and that was a PC-only title).

Yes, but I'm a PC gamer. I guarantee you that my wife, who recognizes "The Sims" would have no idea what I was talking about if I tried to mention Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo. They aren't household names, they are just names that certain groups of people recognize.

Despite your sureness, those are not "fairly standard PC gamer numbers". Every one of Blizzard's games since the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans has been a market-defining smash success.

I have no idea where you're getting your numbers from, but it doesn't matter either as you're entirely missing my point.

Do you think shipping those games would've translated to even greater success for Blizzard? In any case, as someone who has apparently "been following them for a while", why do you believe that Blizzard gained no value from those projects?

I don't know if it would have or not, and I'm not saying that they made an incorrect decision in regards to those games. I'm only saying it is surprising they have been successful when they have thrown away years worth of time and money on not just a couple of games but several. They could have gained a lot of experience from those games, but they certainly didn't recoup the cost.

Warcraft 3, released in 2002, still posts over 250,000 unique players per week, and frequently far higher. No UT title has achieved more than a tiny fraction of that player activity, even within the first few months after launch. In fact, I'm conservatively understating those numbers because, frankly, I'm too lazy to pore through Battlenet's stats to substantiate the actual numbers, which appear to be astonishingly higher. Let's just close with the point that Warcraft 3's smallest server hosts more officially-sanctioned tournament players per week than the entire communities for UT99, UT2k4, and UT3 put together - and that doesn't count any non-tournament play, which dwarfs the official tournaments.

This paragraph is verging on blind fanboyism. I'm sorry.

Can you show me that no UT game ever posted 250,000 unique players in a week? Just because the "current numbers" only show 8,000 people or whatnot doesn't prove anything in that way.

I have no idea what you're trying to say with that last sentence. There isn't a "Warcraft 3 Dedicated Server". Are you talking about a Battle.net server?

 

[Go&nd]

Two fanboys fighting! How cute!

Brizz: Even if it's happened outside of your scope of interest, Blizzard has been a tremendously successful developer. I doubt any of Epic's games have sold as well on one platform as Diablo, Diablo II, Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Starcraft and World of Warcraft.

Don't get me wrong. I haven't played these games and I don't play them. But I follow PC gaming closely. These games were all enormous. Blizzard is on par with Valve in having a reputation for releasing extremely polished games that achieve both critical acclaim and tremendous commercial success.

The way Epic released a controversially unfinished game in the wake of several once-a-generation hits illustrates that Epic is in no place to challenge Blizzard's business savvy.

 

[howl`]

Brizz:
Not gonna lie, you're known for your blind fanboy replies so posting this is probably a massive waste of time.

1) Warcraft is advertised on TV by the likes of William Shattner and Mr. T - I'm sorry, that's extremely house hold. Gamers are a common thing, any such person in the last 10 years knows what Star Craft is - you don't sell numbers like that without such notoriety.

2) Swiinii is getting his numbers from sales totals. You can look them up yourself, if you're too inept to let me know and I'll source it for you. Everything Blizzard has every sold has easily moved more copies than Epic's best.

3) I work in game development for Namco. It is common for studios to trash titles that just aren't there. While Blizzard is a bit more zealous about it than others, they have standards no other company can claim to meet - certainly not Epic. Standards are the product of taking your time and doing it right. Are you even aware SC was patched less than a month ago and War3 just received 1.21b with 1.22 moments away? Are you aware they host tournaments on battle.net constantly? Are you aware what Blizzcon actually does? Support players with travel cost to a competitive live event and use the venue to debut development titles and get feedback from their core audience.

Is it smart business for Blizzard to do this? Well their bottom line says it must be. Did you even pay attention to the insane 1.1billion net profit they generated in 2007. Epic and Blizzard aren't the same tier and thus Epic being critical of them is such a laugh.

4) Guess what, War3 and SC are much older than UT04 and UT3 so current numbers are viable. He pulled that data from the publicly available numbers at battle.net. You can see the number of unique players in each game class, even sanctioned tournaments. Even the smallest domain (Lorderon) has more players active in sanctioned tournaments than all UT games combined. There's 4 other domain groups that are usually 4x the size of Lorderon - EACH. In fact, the number of active players in sanctioned tournaments approaches 200k. This is just a single week of statistics.

Welcome to the benefits of supporting your community and development with high standards. You reap a player base that Epic don't even being to dream of. Recent announcements of zero client side demos and the utter lack of AC in UT3; despite Mark Rein, telling us to not worry, really bring to light just how little Epic cares. Honestly, I'm sure the people behind Epic are quality human beings, but the lot of their PR force should be fired. They've turned something so many of us once loved into a laughing stock.

 

[JaFO]

In that quote, I believe he's saying that you should know something isn't working before the game is finished.

I think it could be simplified even further :
Letting the 'money'/'marketing' dictate the (software)production is just as bad for company&product as leaving it to the artists/developers is.
The former tends to suck the 'soul' out of the product (EA/mass-market products) and the latter won't ever finish anything (Duke Nukem Forever ... ).

There was a great GDC lecture a few years ago where a guy said the goal of prototyping is to fail as quickly as possible. You want to know something isn't going to be any fun as soon as possible.

That sounds like Apple ... (ie : produce lots of failures, because without failure there can't be any successes). I think that kind of attitude/process is something only a really wealthy/big company can attempt.
Small companies/developers would risk bankruptcy if they ever had more dead projects than 'good'/finished ones.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Brizz:
Not gonna lie, you're known for your blind fanboy replies so posting this is probably a massive waste of time.

Yes, not having utter disdain for something that some people don't like is clearly blind fanboyism.

1) Warcraft is advertised on TV by the likes of William Shattner and Mr. T - I'm sorry, that's extremely house hold. Gamers are a common thing, any such person in the last 10 years knows what Star Craft is - you don't sell numbers like that without such notoriety.

I hope you mean SpikeTV, because Warcraft has not been advertised on network television in the US.

2) Swiinii is getting his numbers from sales totals. You can look them up yourself, if you're too inept to let me know and I'll source it for you. Everything Blizzard has every sold has easily moved more copies than Epic's best.

I'm not saying they haven't, I simply can't just trust his numbers. I'm positive that World of Warcraft has sold more copies than Gears of War, but that doesn't say anything about Warcraft 3 or other previous Blizzard games.

3) I work in game development for Namco. It is common for studios to trash titles that just aren't there. While Blizzard is a bit more zealous about it than others, they have standards no other company can claim to meet - certainly not Epic. Standards are the product of taking your time and doing it right. Are you even aware SC was patched less than a month ago and War3 just received 1.21b with 1.22 moments away? Are you aware they host tournaments on battle.net constantly? Are you aware what Blizzcon actually does? Support players with travel cost to a competitive live event and use the venue to debut development titles and get feedback from their core audience.

Would you like to tell me where I ever said that Blizzard was a terrible company and that Epixc was so much better than them? Because I'm having a hard time finding it in my previous posts.

Also, patching SC/WC3 with "Removed CD-key check" at this point is rather silly. I wouldn't say that can really be considered "Continual support" for older games.

Is it smart business for Blizzard to do this? Well their bottom line says it must be. Did you even pay attention to the insane 1.1billion net profit they generated in 2007. Epic and Blizzard aren't the same tier and thus Epic being critical of them is such a laugh.

I'm quite acutely aware of how much money Blizzard is making, but it's not thanks to their previous games (other than their effect on Blizzard's reputation, to a certain extent).

At the same time, Epic is selling a lot of engine licenses. You can't tell me you have any idea how much money that is generating for them.

4) Guess what, War3 and SC are much older than UT04 and UT3 so current numbers are viable. He pulled that data from the publicly available numbers at battle.net. You can see the number of unique players in each game class, even sanctioned tournaments. Even the smallest domain (Lorderon) has more players active in sanctioned tournaments than all UT games combined. There's 4 other domain groups that are usually 4x the size of Lorderon - EACH. In fact, the number of active players in sanctioned tournaments approaches 200k. This is just a single week of statistics.

You still haven't proved that no UT game ever had 250,000 unique players in a single week.