CliffyB Talks Game Development

[Sir_Brizz]

Like why? Why would players just complain about the game for no good reason?

See the forums for any game ever made. People always whine. Everyone here is saying UT2004 was an awesome game, and there was no end to the whining there either.

Meta Critic disagrees.

I think you're barking up the wrong tree, personally.
Why did the other top FPS games get higher scores? Why was the short time they spent on those good enough for a review, but with UT 3 they should have waited for a patch (I'm not saying you implied this) or played it much longer?

It seems to me as if many a loyal fan is looking for the failings of UT3 on PC else where than with the actual game.

Metacritic doesn't count all the reviews that were done, it's only a small selection. That's essentially like saying that the news CNN covers is the only news there is. People read reviews on a lot of sites (and blogs). The problem is that even professional sites like 1up gave UT3 a bad shake (the PC version, not the PS3 version).

 

[elmuerte]

Oh please, get a grip.
No ones really flaming yet and are you surprised that PC users who are read that the company they've been supporting for years has labeled them "secondary"? Were you maybe expecting everyone to be joyous about that fact and start praising Epic for that attitude?

Read the thread again (and keep following it), and you'll see the trolls and flames pop up here and there. And I didn't say the thread was already a flamewar/trollfest (although it had two trolls before I replied alread), I was just predicting it to become a flamewar/trollfest.

 

[Anuban]

I'd have to agree with whoever said that Cliffy B was bitter. I don't, however, know if I could condemn him for feeling so. They poured everything they had into UT3, and in my opinion it is a wicked game. The PC community basically gave them the finger and there were no sales. They did the same with wars on console and everyone ate it up because they had been waiting for a title of that quality for quite some time.

We (PC users) - and again this is MY opinion - are ungrateful. There is no reason copies of UT3 should not be flying of the shelves. I play with a prominent community that echoes back from Unreal on the days of Heat.net and I realize that the competitive angle wasn't there right away. The bugs are gone now though, and there has been no response.

CAL (Cyberathletes Amateur League) has a meager 1 vs 1 category for the game because there just isn't enough community interest. Don't expect to see Unreal Tournament 4 anytime soon. From a business cents point of view its a complete waste of time.

Epic games will get more acclaim and attention if they take console games with huge install bases like Gears of War and push the competitive aspect (Much like Microsoft did with Halo). UT3 is certainly not going to contribute to the idea of a "pro gamer" because of its weak performance. The "pro" community is established, but has a very weak pulse. It's there and its getting stronger, but still just a blip on the radar when you look at both sales numbers and competitive gaming.

Sadness, pure sadness

We are ungrateful? What are you talking about? What should we be grateful for? For two games in a row that are subpar as far as PC games go? Gears PC is a bug ridden mess of a game and there is NO excuse for that when it was done so well for the 360. And please let's not get started on UT3 again ... what is this stuff about them fixing all the bugs? Dude you are making me laugh ... tons of folks still have issues running the game ... and having the same roster and one single column to create teams for all the game types is a huge bug, that is not a feature that is poor design at best. Not to mention how UT3 does not remember settings for things like match time, points, bot skill, mutators so there is still a lot of work to be done ... I mean when is the last time that a high level PC game did not offer users FSAA and Epic has failed its DX9 audience (its largest PC base) entirely ... by designing an engine where AA won't even work correctly if you have DX9. I don't see this issue with ANY OTHER MAJOR AAA PC SHOOTER unless it comes from Epic or uses Epic's technology. So you tell me who is ungrateful again. I mean a high end PC user using XP can't count on getting true FSAA from Epic but any Xbox 360 user can? And you want us to believe that Epic is not trying to cut its ties to PC gaming. And UT3's motion blur issue on the PC has not been addressed at all.

Epic's history had been that their first release of a PC title was kind of messy but not so on the 360 ... oh no ... they made sure that this first installment of Gears of War was damn near perfect (of course it had some bugs but for the most part people were very happy as noted by the record breaking sales) ... again pointing to the future where Epic is really no longer making PC games but allowing other devs or internal devs specialized in PC projects to port their games to the PC ... heck like I said before the engine is not even made to really push the PC like the Crysis and Monolith engines are ... more proof that this engine was designed with next gen consoles (and primarily the 360) have been their target audience since development on UE3 began. Why else would FSAA become so neglected and why would Epic not even try to make games that take real advantage of the fetures of DX10 when these are supposed to be the leaders in PC graphics ... guess they gave up that race when they say Crysis early on or realized that their character models would never look as real as Valve models. So really it is no surprise but still to actually hear them say that when they Rein has been saying how important we are ... yeah he meant the modders for this release since they hope to pull a lot of folks into the Unreal Universe and so this time to get some interest they will allow mods but as I said by the next big version of UT for tournaments mods won't be important to them at all.

Epic is definitely not even in the top 5 PC gaming companies anymore ... and that is almost absurd when you think about it and about how great Unreal games have been ... now it seems like Epic is positioning itself to be one of the top 5 console gaming developers ... this is probably the strategy they mapped out years ago when UT2K3/UC1 and Unreal II did not go over as well as they had hoped. So it seems now in retrospect they put in their last major effort with UT2K4 almost as a goodbye gift to all of the UT fans and UC2 was a way to get some people ready for what was coming ... games built ground up for the console ... heck in looking back now I bet that was like a practice run for them.

 

[BOiNG]

See the forums for any game ever made. People always whine. Everyone here is saying UT2004 was an awesome game, and there was no end to the whining there either.

Well if gamers always whine, why is it that it hurt UT3 more than it hurt the other games that get whined at just as much?
For exactly the same reason I don't understand why if people whined so much about UT2k4, why it didn't do so bad for itself?

Read the thread again (and keep following it), and you'll see the trolls and flames pop up here and there. And I didn't say the thread was already a flamewar/trollfest (although it had two trolls before I replied alread), I was just predicting it to become a flamewar/trollfest.

Fair enough.

 

[Anuban]

Hmmm 83% avg among 35 sites is quite good I would say (source Gamerankings PC version) ... so no the critics are not to blame here ... they did not sink UT3 in the least. Epic did that to themselves a long time ago and I outlined why I now believe that to be the case above. Again the biggest clue to me is not having a truly bleeding edge PC gaming engine ... but instead one that is more suited for consoles on a mass level as middleware for all types of game .. even though they have real serious issues with texture pop in (I can't believe this has still yet to be resolved).

 

[dub]

83% average score is one percent off what BU gave UT3 as an average score (84%)

 

[Festering Anus]

I still don't get why they don't port all games to PC. So what if you only sell 50000 copies.

50$x50000= $25000000 profit, because the development costs were mainly for the console versions.

This would definitely grow the PC market.

 

[WarTourist]

I still don't get why they don't port all games to PC. So what if you only sell 50000 copies.

50$x50000= $25000000 profit, because the development costs were mainly for the console versions.

This would definitely grow the PC market.

Actually going to retail is a very expensive proposition. Publishers spend far more on duplication, inventory management, customer service, marketing, etc that they do on the initial development (in most instances, there's always exceptions).

Your math is slightly off as well, 50k at 50 bucks would net 2.5m in revenue (not profit), of which the retailer takes their cut, the distributor, the publisher, etc. In many instances (again, not all) selling 50k lifetime wouldn't justify the associated costs with selling in stores. It could very easily be a money losing proposition.

 

[Beelzebud (Satanas)]

So they release UT3 as one of the most sloppy console to PC ports I've ever seen, GoW with a savegame bug that STILL has not been fixed, and he's got the gall to blame the poor sales on PC gamers themselves?

Try looking into the mirror buddy.. PC Gamers MADE Epic what it is, and if you're going to turn your backs on us, then fine. There are many companies out there not releasing sub-par console ports of their games on PC, and from now on they'll be getting my money, and not Epic.

I'm done. I'll never buy another Epic game again.

If you want to throw out a community that made mods, maps and your early company successful, and trade them in for a bunch of console idiots that think the best way to determine lag on a multiplayer game is to see how many green bars it has, then be my guest. I'll be over here playing Valve games or Splash Damage games.

 

[Unregistered]

UT3 was not, in itself, that bad of a game. When you got in and *played* the game, it was fun and quite worthwhile. The primary problem that it suffered from is indicative of the PC gaming market as a whole.

The UI just plain sucked.

The features were not there. Having been playing PC games since the heady days of Wolfenstein 3D, I vividly remember setting up IRQ and DMA ports on soundcards. Even the original UT had a plethora of options, settings, and features that could be tweaked around with, and this persisted up to UT2K4 and other games around that time. But sometime recently, I'm not precisely sure when, the features and options that were the hallmark of PC games just... disappeared. Bioshock had virtually no options available, for example.

In short, companies have been turning PC games into console games, and then scratching their heads wondering why the console versions sell better.

The PC gaming market is only "in disarray" because there really is no PC gaming market anymore. The fact is it doesn't work out like a market. PC games have always been for people who are -- and this is a moment of pompousness here -- more advanced than console users. Console games just load the disc and play, they're simple and easy. PC games require some tweaking, a lot of fiddling with the options; but once that fiddling is done they are a more rewarding experience for it. They are more complex and deep, they have more options and just flat-out more gameplay.

But there have been very, very few PC games released in the past few years. What we've gotten are a bunch of console games done on the PC platform.

And unfortunately it doesn't make market sense. True PC gamers are a very small market, and making a big-budget title specifically for that small market is a ludicrous business decision. The truly great PC games came during an era when Videogaming was struggling to legitimize itself. Working so hard to prove that it was a valid form of entertainment. Now that it's been established and no longer has to fight and scrape just to survive, it can afford to do the same thing that Television and Movies have done once they stopped having to fight.

Put out a bunch of derivative crap that the masses slurp up through a straw

 

[Anuban]

Well I am not going to say I won't buy Epic games ... I still love the graphics that UE3 produces and I am looking forward to Gears 2 on the 360. Its just that I won't be buying any UE3 based PC games from Epic or anyone else. I really think it is subpar PC gaming engine that is very unstable and lacks some critical things for PCs ... especially WinXP/Dx9 based PCs.

 

[Poker]

the majority of reviewers did not play UT3 for long enough to review it properly (and that is based on the content of their reviews). Imagine if reviewers had called Crysis a Far Cry clone that looked the same but ran worse and had no striking gameplay enhancements over it. I'm sure the game's sales would have been pretty dismal if that had been going around. This is essentially what happened to UT3.

But why would reviewers treat Crysis differently than UT3? That doesn't make sense either.

UT3 certainly doesn't "look the same" as UT2004 (though very similar to Gears), but I'm not sure that reviewers who say there aren't any striking gameplay enhancements are too far off base. Warfare (= ONS + orbs + objectives) is about as much "gameplay enhancement" as there is in UT3, and compared to what was new in previous releases (e.g. UT2004: ONS itself was fantastically novel at the time), that's not much.

Necris vehicles, a totally forgettable single player campaign, very minor adjustments to weapons and pickups ... not to mention a clunky UI, to put it kindly ... beyond that, what else is new, really?

Hmmm 83% avg among 35 sites is quite good I would say (source Gamerankings PC version) ... so no the critics are not to blame here ... they did not sink UT3 in the least. Epic did that to themselves a long time ago....

The average blog sites are looser with their fact-finding and not as thorough with their reviews, so they rely on hype and buzz and "what people are saying" much more to fill their pages. And with the way UT3 was released, i.e. it was rushed out before it was ready technically, and all the subsequent problems users had with it, the negative reaction started to snowball, and there you go.

Magazine-grade outlets on the other hand, which are of the type presumably represented more by metacritic, generally got more hands-on and came away feeling like UT3 was a solid game plagued by several areas that lacked polish. Which is the most accurate description.

All of which is a shame ... at some point UT3 will be patched and polished, and if they'd have released that initially, the reception would have been way, way different.

 

[J3FF]

EPIC got blinded by its monetary success. That's all. They simply forgot where they came from.

 

[Anuban]

Sorry if I wasn't clear ... it is not 35 internet sites ... it is 35 recognized gaming critics ... the ones that do all the games .... so this is not about some blog sites with losers doing reviews my friend. Go to gamerankings.com and see for yourself.

 

[suibhne]

why slum it with bread and butter when there is tasty console cake to be had

The cake is a lie.

Look, we all know UT3's numbers have been pretty dismal, on both PC and PS3. This may have something to do with the PC market in general. Otoh, that market is still fairly stable, and it's still quite rewarding when compared to any individual console market (rather than to "consoles" in general - a phantasmatic construction). And the so-called limitations of the PC market haven't stopped Crysis from going platinum, nor CoD4 or The Orange Box or ET:QW from selling quite well on PC. FPS titles aren't uniquely handicapped in the PC market, in other words. The lesson, instead, seems to be that developers do well on PC when they take the PC seriously rather than treating it as an afterthought.

 

[Anuban]

EPIC got blinded by its monetary success. That's all. They simply forgot where they came from.

Sometimes I think it is really that simple ... then I think nah ... you have to look at this way before Gears blew them up and go back to when they were designing the new engine and what their mindset was. Clearly it was NOT to make the most technically advanced PC gaming engine around ... we can all see that now ... nope the plan from the start was to make an engine that could be used in the next generation of consoles ... from there it grew and now here we are talking about a company that has clearly decided that its main revenue sources are going to be the two consoles.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Well if gamers always whine, why is it that it hurt UT3 more than it hurt the other games that get whined at just as much?
For exactly the same reason I don't understand why if people whined so much about UT2k4, why it didn't do so bad for itself?

It's simply a matter of when the whining began

People have been whining about UT3 since the first public video made it's rounds. And people have whined about, essentially, every SUPPOSED feature of the game, more than ever happened for UT2003 and UT2004.

Also, this is the first UT game that has had an Epic run official forum let alone a forum for that specific game by anyone involved before the demo came out. That automatically just gives the whining more "clout" and I'm sure one of the core reasons that Epic has avoided doing this in the past (as well as why they run such a tight ship over there).

If you think about it, it's probably unlikely that many game reviewers bothered reading the INA forums. It wasn't "run by Epic" and it wasn't really in that obvious of a location. Now, with all the people who knew about the Gears forums and their location they can follow the UT3 screaming much more closely.

What has led me to this theory (and that's all it is) is from reading DOZENS of reviews that didn't sound like the people had even played more than five minutes of the SINGLE PLAYER in a multiplayer game, and included a lot of really invalid complaints that you only heard on Epic's forums. Heck, that 1up UT3 review preview whatever the crap it was was chock full of half-truths and fallacies about the game and they had it running on the machine in front of them!

 

[Quaglax]

I still don't get why they don't port all games to PC. So what if you only sell 50000 copies.

50$x50000= $25000000 profit, because the development costs were mainly for the console versions.

This would definitely grow the PC market.

Man I would LOVEEE to be able to play the Metal Gear Solids on my PC, or the Resident Evils (1 remake specifically) or the Final Fantasy's!!!

 

[Quaglax]

We are ungrateful? What are you talking about? What should we be grateful for? For two games in a row that are subpar as far as PC games go? Gears PC is a bug ridden mess of a game and there is NO excuse for that when it was done so well for the 360. And please let's not get started on UT3 again ... what is this stuff about them fixing all the bugs? Dude you are making me laugh ... tons of folks still have issues running the game ... and having the same roster and one single column to create teams for all the game types is a huge bug, that is not a feature that is poor design at best. Not to mention how UT3 does not remember settings for things like match time, points, bot skill, mutators so there is still a lot of work to be done ... I mean when is the last time that a high level PC game did not offer users FSAA and Epic has failed its DX9 audience (its largest PC base) entirely ... by designing an engine where AA won't even work correctly if you have DX9. I don't see this issue with ANY OTHER MAJOR AAA PC SHOOTER unless it comes from Epic or uses Epic's technology. So you tell me who is ungrateful again. I mean a high end PC user using XP can't count on getting true FSAA from Epic but any Xbox 360 user can? And you want us to believe that Epic is not trying to cut its ties to PC gaming. And UT3's motion blur issue on the PC has not been addressed at all.

Epic's history had been that their first release of a PC title was kind of messy but not so on the 360 ... oh no ... they made sure that this first installment of Gears of War was damn near perfect (of course it had some bugs but for the most part people were very happy as noted by the record breaking sales) ... again pointing to the future where Epic is really no longer making PC games but allowing other devs or internal devs specialized in PC projects to port their games to the PC ... heck like I said before the engine is not even made to really push the PC like the Crysis and Monolith engines are ... more proof that this engine was designed with next gen consoles (and primarily the 360) have been their target audience since development on UE3 began. Why else would FSAA become so neglected and why would Epic not even try to make games that take real advantage of the fetures of DX10 when these are supposed to be the leaders in PC graphics ... guess they gave up that race when they say Crysis early on or realized that their character models would never look as real as Valve models. So really it is no surprise but still to actually hear them say that when they Rein has been saying how important we are ... yeah he meant the modders for this release since they hope to pull a lot of folks into the Unreal Universe and so this time to get some interest they will allow mods but as I said by the next big version of UT for tournaments mods won't be important to them at all.

Epic is definitely not even in the top 5 PC gaming companies anymore ... and that is almost absurd when you think about it and about how great Unreal games have been ... now it seems like Epic is positioning itself to be one of the top 5 console gaming developers ... this is probably the strategy they mapped out years ago when UT2K3/UC1 and Unreal II did not go over as well as they had hoped. So it seems now in retrospect they put in their last major effort with UT2K4 almost as a goodbye gift to all of the UT fans and UC2 was a way to get some people ready for what was coming ... games built ground up for the console ... heck in looking back now I bet that was like a practice run for them.

Seems to me your got your panties in a twist cause it doesnt support AA on DX9. Cry me and river...build a bridge....and get the **** over it.

 

[Severin]

The cake is a lie.

Look, we all know UT3's numbers have been pretty dismal, on both PC and PS3. This may have something to do with the PC market in general. Otoh, that market is still fairly stable, and it's still quite rewarding when compared to any individual console market (rather than to "consoles" in general - a phantasmatic construction). And the so-called limitations of the PC market haven't stopped Crysis from going platinum, nor CoD4 or The Orange Box or ET:QW from selling quite well on PC. FPS titles aren't uniquely handicapped in the PC market, in other words. The lesson, instead, seems to be that developers do well on PC when they take the PC seriously rather than treating it as an afterthought.

We agree, I wasn't making a general comment.
Consoles haven't stopped people developing big titles for the Pc nor will they for a while yet imo.