Cliff Bleszinski Responds To Critics
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instantaction.com (and quakelive) are not browser based games.
sure, they run within your browers, but you are actually installing a plugin (like flash) that loads the game within the browser session and uses the piece of the page as its render target.
I'm not a big fan of running that kind of stuff from within a browser, it's not like all those games couldn't run as standalone games (in fact, all/most of instantaction.com's games were originally standalone games, see garagegames.com )
sure, they run within your browers, but you are actually installing a plugin (like flash) that loads the game within the browser session and uses the piece of the page as its render target.
I'm not a big fan of running that kind of stuff from within a browser, it's not like all those games couldn't run as standalone games (in fact, all/most of instantaction.com's games were originally standalone games, see garagegames.com )
Win95 includes DOS, but is not built upon DOS
Hi El Muerte. It sure simplifies installation and for all intents and purposes LOOKS like a browser game. What's the downside from your perspective?
You'll get over it.
You're saying I just have to learn to let my spirit die and settle for less? Even if I did, those really aren't my only problems with consoles.
I'm still playing ut2k4 to this day, but I'm running it with almost 100% user-generated content.
Whatever they are, I don't care, that wasn't the point.
Ah, so PC people. Yep, Steam is the ultimate PC gaming store right now in my opinion.
I personally find that overly melodramatic. If a game you're interested in is being made for a console and not the PC, how is playing it on console settling for less? Not playing it seems like the real "less" option.
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That's not a fair comparison, of course.
If we consider the gaming landscape at the time, it would be more like Epic suddenly not developing games for PCs (whether it being DOS or Win95) anymore, but directing all their attention towards the brand new Playstation2. Telling people that this new console is the way to go. That Unreal PC was being pirated way too much for their liking. That they wanted to focus all their attention towards developing PS2 games. That the PC is not a fruitful platform for gaming anymore. At least, not fruitful for making money.Epic is moving away from the platform that made us love them. They are moving away from community-driven, online-competition, pro-league gaming. They are moving away from the area in gaming that made us love them.
Don't try to act as if we are being unreasonable for being upset about this clear change of course of the company we've come to love so much. It's not like moving from DOS to Win95. It's like moving from Internet to Television. Moving from interactive community-based fun, to passive mass-produced entertaiment. It's big.
War tourist, that was the big seller for me. User content. Ps3 has it, but cant host dedicated servers/redirect. Xbox isnt open ended enough.
I know an effort was made, but UT isnt UT without it. If UT gets priority on the consoles, do your best to give it the treatment it got 10 years ago.
Not really bitchiing, just voicing something you heard a thousand times. I'm being optimistic that if enough people complain, you can force someone's hand.
So you suggest a company not follow the trends of the industry and make much less money that they could otherwise? I don't know a business that operates like that for long..
Companies that bitch about piracy on the PC aren't using it as an excuse, but as a possible explanation for where all the sales are going. This isn't a chicken or the egg situation, PC retail sales have been dramatically drying up for at least 5 years. Many are looking at their bottom line and saying the opportunity cost is just too great to ignore any more. If you can make a game that sells 1 million on one platform or 100k on another, emotional attachments just don't factor in to the decision very much. Reality does.
In my opinion, posting on forums is one step below doing absolutely nothing to solve the issue being discussed. Rather than working towards real change, one is simply low-effort venting. Ultimately the only power most consumers have is the decision whether or not to buy a product. If you buy it, the only message heard is "Excellent work!". If you don't buy it, the message is "Do better next time!". This is not to say game forums don't serve a valuable purpose in giving devs access to the brains of people who play their games sometimes more than they do. But for eliciting change to business strategies, convincing your pet cat would be a better use of your time
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Yes it was a melodramatic, but I'm saying it's settling for less for the reasons I mentioned. It will look horrible on my TV, especially since I'm sitting far away, and I'll have to use a control scheme that I find awkward and confining. When I play FPSs (the bulk of what I play) on a console, it feels like I'm wearing blinders pushing my through molasses.
In the end, even if it is a fun game, the overall experience will be a fraction as enjoyable as it would have been on my PC. That's just how I feel about it.
It's funny .. Wartourist comes on board talking mostly a bunch of nonsense but in essence telling you folks to just move on to console gaming and yet people are not in an uproar .. how funny. When I suggested this though all I heard was a bunch of criticism. Well tell him how you honestly feel. And really I find it very surprising no one is seeing through all this double talk and back forth statements Epic makes (which at this point who really knows what the real story is ... they have mispoken so many times) that any PC game coming from them now is by definition subpar since it will also be on other platforms.
"Originally Posted by Mark Rein
On Gears 2 we decided 100% of the effort was going to go to the one console version. I believe that concentration of effort has made Gears 2 an even better game than the original... ...In addition PCF is now working on their own kickass game, to be published by EA, which is being designed from the start for both PC and console"
So is anyone wondering what the heck this really means? According to Rein's own words we shouldn't expect this new PCF game to be the best it can be since it is going to designed for both PC and consoles ... why couldn't that be done with Gears and what went wrong with UT3 is you are saying that you can do both? Does this mean that from now on if we multi-platform products from Epic that we already know that it is subpar AAA product and that in no way should they be asking the full price of $50 and $60 for it? Epic and "Dude Huge" (This is Cliff's new nickname over at Kotaku) have become a joke imo ... and you know what even the mighty fall and especially when they are a bunch of arrogant swell headed jerks casting aside loyal core users who helped build the company just because they hit it big with ONE console game. Unreal .. now that is what that is.
Anyway at least now we know why UT3 is such an unrefined mess and that everything and I do mean everything Epic says at this point is just a bunch of meaningless marketing speak (okay except when Sweeney speaks ... at least he is sincere about technology) and the bottomline for them is just Gears of War making money on the 360 platform only. Everything else is less than secondary. And think about this ... if Piracy is such a MAJOR issue then why even bring the PCF to the PC ... why not use a consistent practice at least. I mean does that make logical sense to you folks when you give it real thought. One game is just too awesome for PCs but its okay to have another be multi-platform when you just gave us all these arguments against multi-plat games. So unless someone at Epic tells us up front now that the PCF title is a budget title and will not be full price why would you trust them? And why would you buy the game at full price after the whole UT3 debacle where mere months after selling for $50 people could get it for $15-$20 and now it is as low as $10 ... so is this going to be the norm? How much longer will people tolerate Epic treating the community like a bunch of suckers?
Edit: Why do folks even pay attention to the person most responsible for the failure of this once magnificent game anyway ... its laughable to see people holding their tongues and even listening calmly when they are being told essentially "forget about it there is nothing you can do ... it's our way or the highway" and has the nerve to say to folks they shouldn't complain or it serves no purpose. Wrong ... the purpose it serves is to at least let Epic know not all of us are blind followers of corporate BS. And that we can see when a company is not being straightforward with their customers. Again do I really need to remind folks what UT3 was supposed to be (and what we told by both Rein and Morris ... folks may need to go to Youtube and watch his series of press videos) and what it actually is almost a full year later ... more than a full year after the beta of which almost NONE of the community feedback was implemented. I swear this community deserves what it gets (or got in this case ... a 2nd class UT3).
"Originally Posted by Mark Rein
On Gears 2 we decided 100% of the effort was going to go to the one console version. I believe that concentration of effort has made Gears 2 an even better game than the original... ...In addition PCF is now working on their own kickass game, to be published by EA, which is being designed from the start for both PC and console"
So is anyone wondering what the heck this really means? According to Rein's own words we shouldn't expect this new PCF game to be the best it can be since it is going to designed for both PC and consoles ... why couldn't that be done with Gears and what went wrong with UT3 is you are saying that you can do both? Does this mean that from now on if we multi-platform products from Epic that we already know that it is subpar AAA product and that in no way should they be asking the full price of $50 and $60 for it? Epic and "Dude Huge" (This is Cliff's new nickname over at Kotaku) have become a joke imo ... and you know what even the mighty fall and especially when they are a bunch of arrogant swell headed jerks casting aside loyal core users who helped build the company just because they hit it big with ONE console game. Unreal .. now that is what that is.
Anyway at least now we know why UT3 is such an unrefined mess and that everything and I do mean everything Epic says at this point is just a bunch of meaningless marketing speak (okay except when Sweeney speaks ... at least he is sincere about technology) and the bottomline for them is just Gears of War making money on the 360 platform only. Everything else is less than secondary. And think about this ... if Piracy is such a MAJOR issue then why even bring the PCF to the PC ... why not use a consistent practice at least. I mean does that make logical sense to you folks when you give it real thought. One game is just too awesome for PCs but its okay to have another be multi-platform when you just gave us all these arguments against multi-plat games. So unless someone at Epic tells us up front now that the PCF title is a budget title and will not be full price why would you trust them? And why would you buy the game at full price after the whole UT3 debacle where mere months after selling for $50 people could get it for $15-$20 and now it is as low as $10 ... so is this going to be the norm? How much longer will people tolerate Epic treating the community like a bunch of suckers?
Edit: Why do folks even pay attention to the person most responsible for the failure of this once magnificent game anyway ... its laughable to see people holding their tongues and even listening calmly when they are being told essentially "forget about it there is nothing you can do ... it's our way or the highway" and has the nerve to say to folks they shouldn't complain or it serves no purpose. Wrong ... the purpose it serves is to at least let Epic know not all of us are blind followers of corporate BS. And that we can see when a company is not being straightforward with their customers. Again do I really need to remind folks what UT3 was supposed to be (and what we told by both Rein and Morris ... folks may need to go to Youtube and watch his series of press videos) and what it actually is almost a full year later ... more than a full year after the beta of which almost NONE of the community feedback was implemented. I swear this community deserves what it gets (or got in this case ... a 2nd class UT3).
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Many felt the way you do, but don't any more. I suspect that if your real passion is FPS, and the best FPS are being made on consoles, you'll get over that feeling.
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Like I said, that certainly isn't my only reason to stay away from consoles, even if I were to just settle for whatever's for sale, rather than hold out for what I want.
I'm not saying that Epic's business strategy is incorrect. I totally agree with them that consoles are where the 'easy' money is nowadays.
However, this still doesn't mean that people can't be upset about the fact that they're resetting their course in the way they are. Moreover, I don't think I can be a big fan of a company that is 'just another console developer'. I don't think of Gears of Wars as an innovative product, no matter how enthusiastic CliffyB is about the soap opera style drama of the sequel. Unreal and UT99 were both innovative products. That's why we fell in love with the company.
Not sure the guys putting in 80 hour weeks on Gears crunch would agree with that 'easy' part
.Having gone through my own console migration, I can understand the feeling, but ultimately I'm a game player and I go where the games are. It sucked moving from Apple ][s to Amigas, Amigas to Dos, Dos to Windows, and now Windows to consoles. Platform migration is a part of gaming, and as long as you're enjoying the games you're playing, the platform is always secondary (to me at least).
And as you correctly point out, there's little that is more irrelevant to a business decision than emotions.
Many console gamers feel the exact same way. DLC has become a part of the universal gaming lexicon and is expected for most AAA titles, PC or otherwise.
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Just tell us what the future of the ut franchise is, if you go console only with all games fine, but count me out of it, fps on console just isn't my type of thing.
Valve is the last great PC company ... well along with id and I know those two are looking at this and going that is just fine with us. More money in a very starved market place and users that are looking to spend their money so they can get full enjoyment out of their super rigs and so there is no doubt Valve and id (bringing us Rage, SCII, and Diablo III all on the PC) who have always been there for the PC gamers will continue to do so.
These companies are also in the business of making money and I am certain they are not stupid and if making games for PC gamers was really bad business they would also abandon it. But they know the secret to getting people to pay for your games ... make games that people like and craft them expertly and listen to community feedback as well as treating the community with respect and the money will follow. Now if Valve were to ever abandon the PC or if they begin to act like Epic has then yeah we are in trouble.
Also I still hold out some hope that Crytek continues to want to push PC tech forward ... Warhead is a much more solid product than Crysis 1 and so I hope this means some more good things for the future.
Remember back in 2004-5 folks ... man that a great time to be a PC gamer ... UT2K4, Doom 3, HL2, Painkiller, Farcry, F.E.A.R. talk about a great period and we all thought it would get better with the coming new graphics tech. Little did we know that within three years piracy would become this big shield used by companies looking to get out of PC dev and go strictly console (or 80%).
These companies are also in the business of making money and I am certain they are not stupid and if making games for PC gamers was really bad business they would also abandon it. But they know the secret to getting people to pay for your games ... make games that people like and craft them expertly and listen to community feedback as well as treating the community with respect and the money will follow. Now if Valve were to ever abandon the PC or if they begin to act like Epic has then yeah we are in trouble.
Also I still hold out some hope that Crytek continues to want to push PC tech forward ... Warhead is a much more solid product than Crysis 1 and so I hope this means some more good things for the future.
Remember back in 2004-5 folks ... man that a great time to be a PC gamer ... UT2K4, Doom 3, HL2, Painkiller, Farcry, F.E.A.R. talk about a great period and we all thought it would get better with the coming new graphics tech. Little did we know that within three years piracy would become this big shield used by companies looking to get out of PC dev and go strictly console (or 80%).
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