CliffyB Talks Game Development

[Anuban]

Hi Anuban. Actually it's undeniable. I can't give npd numbers out, but for instance COD4 sold 1.4m in december alone on the 360 in the US (googleable) and looking at the numbers the PC version is almost exactly 1/10th that, including collectors editions. Throw in the PS3 numbers and I think the ratio spreads even more.

Honorable men can disagree, but unless you've got the hard numbers from retail in front of you, I have to agree with entropy and badvermin.

Well I have a problem with that ... I read that the PC numbers were a million for COD4 and in the U.S. the total sold as of last week is 3.2 million approximately on the 360. So you are saying that the rest of the world bought more than 6 million copies of CoD4? I haven't read that anywhere ... and I keep up with the industry on a daily basis.

Edit: Of course I realize that you may be adding the PS3 numbers for CoD4 ... so far they are 1.1 mill for the U.S. and again how much more could they be for the rest of the world market ... seriously ... maybe another 500K to 1 million.

Are there 10 million 360s in the market? I sure didn't think that was the case and I didn't know that CoD4 had surpassed Gears of War in terms of sales ... now maybe Gears of War on the 360 has sold 10x times as many copies as the PC version but there are reasons for this ... and they are not good unfortunately.

 

[badvermin]

Sorry man .. I'm not buying that excuse at all. You don't even say what title .. ohhh so I may be off somewhat about one title ... please man ... you'll have to do better than that.

I didn't say which title as it's not smart to say "I work for_________" unless you work in PR or want everything you say analyzed. I prefer to provide honest opinions about the games we make.

The NPD released the numbers recently and they don't support what you are saying.

No they don't.

Take the example I gave. In August, during a busy selling time of the year, the TOP PC game only sold 77k units, the second on the list only sold 49k. By the time you get to the bottom of the list, the titles are barely selling anything at all.

 

[ConceptBoz]

It doesn't surprise me that console gaming sells more/more profit. But what's the current state of PC gaming compared to how it was a year ago? Or 5 years ago etc - that should be how PC gaming is compared to when saying its dying/whatever.

Console gaming aims for a different market which is why i find it hard to make direct comparisons - i've always thought this. Its taken over a year for people to realise Wii vs Xbox360/PS3 comparisons are useless. Yet how many years do we continue to do the Console vs PC?

IF epic were saying they were no longer developing for PC and now "console" only (which they are NOT saying) i would see this more as someone who's made music over the years going to make movies.

 

[Anuban]

You know what I am just glad that this thread was the catalyst for responses from two Epic employees on one thread. Even if I am a bit off on the numbers I definitely stand by the point I am making and the rest of what I said. But of course we are not going to agree so I don't need to take this any further. I have my gripes with the game and with what CliffyB said and I don't think he just meant in terms of Gears but I will have to take Entropy's word on that topic, still I do play UT3 because in the end the gameplay is fun and once you start really playing you can forget the other faults, but more so I play UT2k4 even more than I thought I would at this point. I still find UT2K4 the best so far ... I don't agree that UT3 is the most fun but it is the best looking and I think that is what is causing some people to play it instead of UT2K4. But for pure fun you can't beat UT2K4 ... at least not imo.

 

[BOiNG]

Hi Anuban. Actually it's undeniable. I can't give npd numbers out, but for instance COD4 sold 1.4m in december alone on the 360 in the US (googleable) and looking at the numbers the PC version is almost exactly 1/10th that, including collectors editions. Throw in the PS3 numbers and I think the ratio spreads even more.

Honorable men can disagree, but unless you've got the hard numbers from retail in front of you, I have to agree with entropy and badvermin.

So - we've established that games sell better on the PC and you're making a point of this. Does this also reflect the resources and time spent on the PC version of UT3?
Did Epic willingly spend just as much time getting the game right for a system it knew wouldn't provide as many returns?

So we have a couple of game devs in here all pointing to the fact that console games sell x amount of times more than PC games.
Is this point possibly leading to a statement that the PC is just not a lucrative release platform anymore and that it's not viable to release games on it anymore?

 

[Anuban]

Anuban. Chill out dude. They are telling you what they know. No need to tell them they are wrong about what they know and what they have in front of their faces.

Cant exactly tell UTIII devs that they are off on sales figures when they know exactly what they sell.

I am chilled dude. No one is shouting or using exclamation points or bolding anything or calling one any names or anything like that. I am just disagreeing ... I don't know you are talking about.

 

[Molgan]

Well I have a problem with that ... I read that the PC numbers were a million for COD4 and in the U.S. the total sold as of last week is 3.2 million approximately on the 360. So you are saying that the rest of the world bought more than 6 million copies of CoD4?

You have a strange view of the world. The inhabitants of "The Rest of The World" is 20x the population of US, and you can't believe they bought 2x the amount sold in the US? ^^

 

[BigDragon]

So Epic finally admits what we all have known all along. The PC isn't their bread and butter--it's secondary. I told you all it was pretty obvious UT3 was intended for consoles from the very fact it still can't remember its own CD-key. The UI didn't make it obvious enough, but the CD-key was the thing that should have given it away for all of you. There's still no fix for Gears deleting my saves and crashing out on act 3. Epic used to be at the pinnacle of PC game development, but they fell off that after UT2004 and continue to sink now. All they want to do is blame a platform or players for their problems and shovel the blame for their lack of skill/talent onto something/someone else. This is the classic problem of what's going wrong in America these days--People don't take responsibility for their actions. Epic and Jeff, it's really stunning that you guys are having so much trouble figuring out what's wrong with your PC games and why other developers aren't having issues yet you guys are. World in Conflict, Crysis, FEAR, and Team Fortress 2 are games that quickly come to mind as being highly successful PC titles not suffering from all the problems Cliff complains about.

It's time to jump ship. I've been lurking after the abuse of fans I experienced on Epic's forums, but after reading this it's clear that Unreal is dead from the perspective of a PC gamer. For all the complaining I've seen on this forum about Crysis and its steep requirements, they're up over 1.1 million sales so far according to EA. EA is factoring in all EA Downloader sales, online sales, and retail box sales. I have a 3 year old PC and play Crysis just fine even though the online tool says I can't play (Pentium M 760 2.0 GHz single core, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB Geforce 6800 Ultra go). Unlike Epic's games, it doesn't throw some ambiguous random error and crash out when there's a problem. I've caught it on multiple occasions handling an error and giving me a chance to save my progress or try to play on with something not running right. Even their editor is nicer than Epic's now that I've gotten used to it. There's so much more power there in terms of controlling what goes on.

I doubt there will be any future Unreal games. With the path Epic is taking, I bet that in a year or two they'll get gobbled up by Microsoft. Some of you may think I'm being overly critical, but it really burns me up when I see people/companies failing to take responsibility for their actions/failures like Epic is doing--they always blame someone or something else for their problems instead of stepping up to the plate.

 

[Unknown Target]

If one thing is obvious from this thread it is that PC gamers, especially UT fans are very very serious about their game. Unlike most I quite enjoy UT3 and it proved to be the most fun we had at a recent LAN. I'm starting to think that it has a lot more LAN potential than online potential so I'll keep playing it. However, if this is the way Epic is going, I'll also spend my money elsewhere in the future instead. Screw them, I've been faithfull to them for 9 years now. Time has come to move on...

Skipping a bunch of posts to reply to this one - UT3, as much as I love it, is not LANable at the moment. All the major LANs we run here have 2k4 or TF2 being picked over UT3, because UT3 is too unstable, doesn't have good server admin support (the guys on admin row hate running UT3 because it's so limited), and doesn't run as well on older systems as the other two games (even though it's so remarkably scalable).

I'd love to see some UT3 action on a LAN, but at the moment not enough people even have it for that to be a viable option, let alone the reasons listed above. We would actually start a UT3 server and only two or three people including me would join.

 

[Miko]

So Epic finally admits what we all have known all along. The PC isn't their bread and butter--it's secondary. I told you all it was pretty obvious UT3 was intended for consoles from the very fact it still can't remember its own CD-key. The UI didn't make it obvious enough, but the CD-key was the thing that should have given it away for all of you. There's still no fix for Gears deleting my saves and crashing out on act 3. Epic used to be at the pinnacle of PC game development, but they fell off that after UT2004 and continue to sink now. All they want to do is blame a platform or players for their problems and shovel the blame for their lack of skill/talent onto something/someone else. This is the classic problem of what's going wrong in America these days--People don't take responsibility for their actions. Epic and Jeff, it's really stunning that you guys are having so much trouble figuring out what's wrong with your PC games and why other developers aren't having issues yet you guys are. World in Conflict, Crysis, FEAR, and Team Fortress 2 are games that quickly come to mind as being highly successful PC titles not suffering from all the problems Cliff complains about.

It's time to jump ship. I've been lurking after the abuse of fans I experienced on Epic's forums, but after reading this it's clear that Unreal is dead from the perspective of a PC gamer. For all the complaining I've seen on this forum about Crysis and its steep requirements, they're up over 1.1 million sales so far according to EA. EA is factoring in all EA Downloader sales, online sales, and retail box sales. I have a 3 year old PC and play Crysis just fine even though the online tool says I can't play (Pentium M 760 2.0 GHz single core, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB Geforce 6800 Ultra go). Unlike Epic's games, it doesn't throw some ambiguous random error and crash out when there's a problem. I've caught it on multiple occasions handling an error and giving me a chance to save my progress or try to play on with something not running right. Even their editor is nicer than Epic's now that I've gotten used to it. There's so much more power there in terms of controlling what goes on.

I doubt there will be any future Unreal games. With the path Epic is taking, I bet that in a year or two they'll get gobbled up by Microsoft. Some of you may think I'm being overly critical, but it really burns me up when I see people/companies failing to take responsibility for their actions/failures like Epic is doing--they always blame someone or something else for their problems instead of stepping up to the plate.

Dude... Read this and about that Gears PC statement. Epic didn't port that over exactly. Oh and remember DE and Legend had a major hand in UT0X and Unreal II

<warning, long developer rant>

A good point to bring up here, amidst all the raging emotion, is that Cliff's comemnts have been taken completely out of context. He says "So for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part ..." Not only is he talking about his own opinion, but he's doing so from the point of view of the lead designer on Gears, a console focused game. If his head where anywhere else, then I'd really be worried.

You can talk about CoD and Orange Box all you want, but the fact still remains that their console sales are on the order of 10 times their current PC sales. And their PC fans are just as up in arms as ours. This is not a phenominon centralized around Epic or Unreal.

Yes the UT3 UI needs work; yes, we're working on it; and by god, yes you've managed to remember to mention it on occasion. But I'd agree with Brizz that UT3 is about the most fun I've had in the series yet, that the gameplay is really solid. And as for the "consolization" of the game, thats a total B.S. statement -- it doesn't even mean anything, its just a buzz word that you use to tell me that your favorite feature was not included, or that you're unhappy with a design decision we made. We love feedback, and we totaly want to fix as many issues as we can, but saying something meaningless like "the game is consolized" doesn't help anyone because it doesn't mean anything. The truth is that UT was ported from PC to console, not the other way around, despite what you may have been led to believe. PC was our lead sku for a reason, and the game is 100% PC at its core. As has been pointed out in the past, UT2003/4 was in fact console ported to PC, so maybe you're saying you DO want a more console focused game? I'm being facetious, of course, but please get your facts straight.

For those who are totally confused about the point: the AAA designation basically measures how much funding a title has in development, it is not a measure of quality or sales figures (although obviously, those factors are all closely tied).

Lastly, I'm not 100% on my figures, but UT3 sales are completely on par with past titles, if not better (as Wartourist mentioned previously). And the petty whining was just as bad with UT and UT2003 and UT2004 as it has been with UT3, and subsequent patches addressed just as major and just as many issues -- the difference is several years of retrospect on past titles while UT3 is still fresh on people's minds.

Flame on, brethren.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

So Epic finally admits what we all have known all along. The PC isn't their bread and butter--it's secondary.

Somebody didn't read.... any... of the thread

 

[badvermin]

It doesn't surprise me that console gaming sells more/more profit. But what's the current state of PC gaming compared to how it was a year ago? Or 5 years ago etc - that should be how PC gaming is compared to when saying its dying/whatever.

Based on our yearly numbers and looking at individual titles numbers year over year, our PC market is shrinking about 8% a year. Whether that is due to more piracy or a smaller market doesn't really matter, all we see are less sales. Either way, our total PC sales from last year are down 50%, but that is also due to a sharp decrease in the number PC games we put out, and an increased focus on console games.

The reason for focusing on consoles is obvious, like Cliffy was saying. If you have a choice of spending 10 million making a PC game that sells 500k units, or spending 15 million to make a console product that sells 2 million, you are going to chose the console. It's just basic business.

IF epic were saying they were no longer developing for PC and now "console" only (which they are NOT saying) i would see this more as someone who's made music over the years going to make movies.

I don't think that is going to ever happen. Porting to the PC is cheap and easy compared to consoles. It's basically a nice way to help spread the development costs for AAA titles. A middle of the road game might not get ported to the PC, but in all honesty, having fewer but higher quality of games is better than a huge flood of crappy ports.

 

[Bort]

I just want to say that, the people blaming the community for the game fluke are really stupid. This is the community, sites like this that keep supporting the company and the game after all the problems, bugs, etc. Despite all our complains and whining all here and in the other thousands related UT sites want the best for this game because we love this franchise (or used to love it).
Blame the publisher, the reviewers (even that is stupid too), the producers, the level designers, anyone, but no the community that has been here always despite all the crap.

 

[BigDragon]

Dude... Read this and about that Gears PC statement. Epic didn't port that over exactly.

I read that before I posted. Gears still has the Epic and Microsoft logos all over it. I expect it to stop deleting my saves and let me play past act 3 yet no one is fixing the problem. PeopleCanFly is completely MIA. Epic needs to step up to the plate and fix the problem instead of expecting someone else to. Again, it's classic blaming someone else for your problems and not taking responsibility. The only peep out of Epic so far was that they are "looking into things" with Microsoft. MS didn't port Gears either. Any attempt to get any indication of fixes on the way results in the run-around or silence. It's absolutely infuriating since this has never happened on a PC game I've owned before. Hell, even EA and Atari did better than this.

Cliff can be one person saying the PC is secondary, but it's a crystal clear indication that behind closed doors that mindset is floating around. That little statement is the closest you're going to get to telling what's actually going on internally before damage control kicks in and Epic runs around denying it was ever said or twisting it around to be something else. Just because a particular product, in this case a PC game, isn't generating tons of profit (or could be generating a loss), cutting its head off cold turkey is worse than letting it run even at a loss according to business best practices. This is why they'll deny this peek into management's thought process.

Somebody didn't read.... any... of the thread

Somebody did read the thread and obviously hasn't seen a sufficient response to any of these problems. Someone is also reading between the lines at what is really going on and what is damage control and buzzwords/phrases. If Epic were political figures you'd be giddy over them just saying the word "change". I'd only get excited if I got specifics and answers to concerns. It's a very clear difference between you and me.

 

[Wunderbar_007]

<warning, long developer rant>
Yes the UT3 UI needs work; yes, we're working on it;

Lastly, I'm not 100% on my figures, but UT3 sales are completely on par with past titles, if not better (as Wartourist mentioned previously).

See, more good news

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Somebody did read the thread and obviously hasn't seen a sufficient response to any of these problems.

For someone who read the thread, you sure only simply rehashed things other people had said and didn't really add anything to the discussion.

The people who have posted in this thread have nothing to do with GoW PC. It wouldn't be a cheap or easy thing to go to Steve Polge, who has probably only seen traces of Gears code, and tell him to fix a problem that only happens in a few rare circumstances.

That would be like getting a car mechanic to fix a helicopter. He obviously has the basic skills, but it's doubtful he would be able to do it without a great deal of time and expense.

 

[BigDragon]

For someone who read the thread, you sure only simply rehashed things other people had said and didn't really add anything to the discussion.

The people who have posted in this thread have nothing to do with GoW PC. It wouldn't be a cheap or easy thing to go to Steve Polge, who has probably only seen traces of Gears code, and tell him to fix a problem that only happens in a few rare circumstances.

That would be like getting a car mechanic to fix a helicopter. He obviously has the basic skills, but it's doubtful he would be able to do it without a great deal of time and expense.

Then where's the helicopter mechanic? You're completely ignoring that the problems exist by giving up because you can't find a helicopter mechanic or the guy who ported the game. Let's find that helicopter mechanic or those employees at Epic who are supposed to own and fix this problem. There's a very simple way to get rid of bitching and get rid of problems--FIX THEM. You wouldn't agree, but I am a fair person. If there's a problem I'm vocal about it. If there's not a problem, then there's nothing bad to be said and sometimes there's praise if something is really enjoyable. What you're doing here is the same thing Epic is doing by throwing the blame to someone or something else. It's the same old run-around.

If Gears actually worked from start to finish and got support like Crysis has, then I'd have nothing bad to say about it. I have said a lot of negative things about Crysis' multiplayer aspect and a ton of positive things about the singleplayer and editor aspects. I do not shy away from giving good and bad opinions about what I experience. Gears thus far has been completely unspupported and only Windows Live has been getting regular fixes. To use your analogy, you're expecting me to be calm and get excited over "we're looking into it" when my helicopter is still missing panes of glass, half its engine, and a tail rotor. That's the state Gears is in right now on PC. Not to mention the fact that Epic employees are shooting it with paintballs.

 

[Miko]

Epics Gears team might not be doing their job but at least we got confirmation on what the UT3 team is doing in terms of patching.

 

[Anuban]

You have a strange view of the world. The inhabitants of "The Rest of The World" is 20x the population of US, and you can't believe they bought 2x the amount sold in the US? ^^

Dude their are soooo many countries and places on this planet where no one is gaming ... what are YOU talking about. Instead of stating the obvious why not come up with some real numbers.

 

[os][ris]

<warning, long developer rant>

A good point to bring up here, amidst all the raging emotion, is that Cliff's comemnts have been taken completely out of context. He says "So for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part ..." Not only is he talking about his own opinion, but he's doing so from the point of view of the lead designer on Gears, a console focused game. If his head where anywhere else, then I'd really be worried.

You can talk about CoD and Orange Box all you want, but the fact still remains that their console sales are on the order of 10 times their current PC sales. And their PC fans are just as up in arms as ours. This is not a phenominon centralized around Epic or Unreal.

Yes the UT3 UI needs work; yes, we're working on it; and by god, yes you've managed to remember to mention it on occasion. But I'd agree with Brizz that UT3 is about the most fun I've had in the series yet, that the gameplay is really solid. And as for the "consolization" of the game, thats a total B.S. statement -- it doesn't even mean anything, its just a buzz word that you use to tell me that your favorite feature was not included, or that you're unhappy with a design decision we made. We love feedback, and we totaly want to fix as many issues as we can, but saying something meaningless like "the game is consolized" doesn't help anyone because it doesn't mean anything. The truth is that UT was ported from PC to console, not the other way around, despite what you may have been led to believe. PC was our lead sku for a reason, and the game is 100% PC at its core. As has been pointed out in the past, UT2003/4 was in fact console ported to PC, so maybe you're saying you DO want a more console focused game? I'm being facetious, of course, but please get your facts straight.

For those who are totally confused about the point: the AAA designation basically measures how much funding a title has in development, it is not a measure of quality or sales figures (although obviously, those factors are all closely tied).

Lastly, I'm not 100% on my figures, but UT3 sales are completely on par with past titles, if not better (as Wartourist mentioned previously). And the petty whining was just as bad with UT and UT2003 and UT2004 as it has been with UT3, and subsequent patches addressed just as major and just as many issues -- the difference is several years of retrospect on past titles while UT3 is still fresh on people's minds.

Flame on, brethren.

i like this guy. seems like he has a functioning brain..