alanschu

Lee straight up states why he considers this a valid option.

I actually contacted my MP asking what was up. I find that position confusing as well.

@Valsuelm Here's why pirating that stuff is bad: It provides ammunition for those to enact tougher DRMs. If you don't like DRM, don't provide data points that convince someone that they should implement it. Your examples are still all examples of entitlement. They're simply exploiting the convenience of the digital medium and maintaining the demand for pirated goods by doing so. They contribute to the cause of DRM. They also contribute to excuses for poor quality content. For all of your examples, what genuine cost really exists for the people if piracy just didn't exist. Inconvenience, and perhaps a degree of accountability in the event of misplacing/losing something. Especially when concerning video games. I'll disagree that it's a better product, but it's trivially obvious that it's a better value to the customer. But I'm just playing semantics at this point. As much as I loathe piracy, however, I'll give you respect for just being straight up honest about it.

The second one had you shooting up grappling hooks at the beginning at Pointe du Hoc right?

Tell that to the people I work with. QA shares the responsibility. I'm literally speaking from experience in this regard. No self respecting content creator simply goes "eh, QA should have caught it. My hands are washed of this." There are aspects of development that I cover and support, and if something is broken you'll find that I'm not the only person that accepts responsibility for the issue existing. This is in part why I love working with the team I'm on. Did Obsidian actually state that it was all Bethesda's fault? I know many fans feel this is the case, but fans always see what they want to see. Although given the project budget, you've already conceded that Obsidian should have already had their own in house QA team. In what ways is Baldur's Gate more complex than Dragon Age: Origins? You loosely coin a term "RPG elements" and effectively list off games you like. It's only a slam dunk for you if you were actually arguing something else. They didn't even originally aim for Christmas. Alpha Protocol in and of itself was also not a successful game. You ignore the confounding variables in order to support your assumptions. Colonial Marines was canceled one month after Alpha Protocol was released, with Sega stating that they won't be making a sequel to Alpha Protocol. I'm sure they still would have done this if Alpha Protocol sold well enough to justify it though, simply because it fits your hypothesis. (Even though SEGA straight up stated that poor performance is the reason why). Unless you can prove that SEGA wouldn't have done this had the game made its October release (you can't), you're just stating what you think is the case.

It should be noted that I enjoyed the first Call of Duty games. I haven't played Modern Warfare 2 or beyond. I am not interested as I feel I'd get better value for my dollar somewhere else. The first is one of my most memorable games of the the 21st Century. The audio in the game was so well done that it's the first game I actually caught myself ducking while playing. I still remember taking Saint-Mere-Eglise, some of the great set pieces and moments like snagging the Panzerfaust and taking out the Tiger Tank that came barreling over the walls. The British campaign was largely forgettable, but the Soviet campaign was so well done. Storming across the Volga in Stalingrad with no gun, to driving the T-34s, and Pavlov's house is probably still one of my favourite levels in any shooter. It was just so intense. The second one wasn't quite as memorable, but I do remember some fun times blasting through the desert with Cromwell tanks, utilizing the speed to hit the enemy in their flanks. Skipped the third because it was console exclusive, but picked up #4 on a Steam sale and enjoyed it.

They do mention the game mechanics as well, this is true. They were kind of running the gamut. On the plus side, it's infinitely easier to add mechanical options with a mind to do so early in development rather than half way. It's more an aspect of "opportunity cost."

I actually disliked the rock paper scissors aspect of the ship design. I really enjoyed the original Sword of the Stars though.

This is an idealized logical deduction that doesn't occur in reality. The costs associated with options is often non-trivial. It's important to note that even if a task is easy and won't take much time to do, doesn't mean you should do it. In game development, there's is never a shortage of ideas. Stuff is always cut. Given that games are made with a finite amount of resources, this means that one task that only takes a day to complete means some other task is not going to be done instead.

With bated breath, I await your next refreshing and undoubtedly illuminating response to my post. It's important to note that many of the options that they talk about in the post you linked refer to options/variability within the game. The ability to customize your character and choose different paths through the game are what they are talking about. Optional/variable content is typically considered interesting, but depending on the scope of "optional" the concerns people list in this thread are valid. Even with content, excessive optional content can make the game more breadth based instead of depth based. This isn't necessarily bad (Bethesda's games do this), but it will disappoint those that would like a stronger main story of the game. In this sense, with finite resources options are often mutually exclusive. You cannot give the option of the longest, deepest story possible while also providing the option of not requiring the player to play the crit path and instead playing optional side content. One comes at the expense of the other.

Were you expecting it to be uninteresting when you went in? Modern Warfare was the last one I played, and I enjoyed it. I still recall 'Soap' MacTavish and Sgt. Jackson from the game, and really enjoyed the Pripyat missions as Price. I haven't played the game in years now, but evidently I still remember the playable characters. The bonus mission is a lot of fun too. It's equivalent to a popcorn flick, but whereas you find it artistically bland, I find it visceral and intense. Different strokes for different folks. I don't know why someone told you it was about Stealth missions though. The Pripyat missions are somewhat stealthy, but the game revolves around a lot of combat. Frankly, though, I loved the "obnoxious war" component. It's chaotic and provides a decent challenge.

Because the UK was a recipient of Lend-Lease as well, and as a result was able to contribute additional aid to the Soviet Union as well. They aren't sending pilots and hurricanes over to Murmansk days after Barbarossa starts without the assistance the US had been giving them. You're understating the US's contributions to the Allied war effort. I don't agree that one country took on a whole continent, but stating that the Russians [sic] had already turned the tide of the war by the time the US got involved would pretty much mean that the Soviets had turned the tide a few months after June 22 (when the first direct aid shipments from the US arrived in the Soviet Union). The Soviet Union only does as much as they did to defeat the Nazi's because of foreign aid. Without it, their contributions couldn't possibly be as high. The Soviet Union received over 1/3 of the support that the UK received over the duration of the conflict, to the tune of $11 billion dollars at the time. This isn't a trivial contribution.

No worries Lorfean. Nostalgia is powerful and it's not surprising many (on this board and otherwise) aren't big fans of such comments.

*sigh* The war had already turned when the US got involved. Russia did a lot more to defeat the nazis than the US did. With that said, if they hadn't pitched in we would have had a lot more Soviet satellite states in Europe during the Cold War, so I guess we should be thankful for that., I'm sure the Soviets didn't mind eating the US food and stuff like that though. Or flying British aircraft, or being trained by British pilots, or driving British tanks, or wearing British boots. I know Stalin was a shrewd diplomat, but I don't think he was completely blowing smoke up America's butt when he acknowledged that their contributions had been very important at the 1943 Tehran Conference.

You misunderstood. I meant, as a programmer, I don't blame QA for my issues. Those are still my issues, and at the end of the day I am accountable for them. QA just helps me out when I write programs. I could have put in any role (artist, designer, writer). So you'll agree that widespread bug issues (barring the standard Gamebryo engine issues that affected all of those game) aren't simply Bethesda's fault? What level of "RPG complexity" is necessary to truly necessitate a lot more testing? Something like the Landsmeet has dozens of different flags and whatnot that influence how it plays out and was certainly a high risk area. I have limited visibility into something like The Witcher, but even compared to other BioWare games, it's probably among the most complex in terms of its risk. Even DA2, which I would consider less complex overall, had more issues simply due to a schedule that was too aggressive, and the uncertainty of a plot import that made it less easy to control for variability. People are quick to excuse BioWare's problems as being an EA issue, but they make the assumption that the decisions like multiplayer are made by EA, not by BioWare, which is incorrect. Since I've been here, every game was being explored for multiplayer. Now I've only been here since EA owned BioWare, but multiplayer was a planned feature for Origins and was ultimately cut. Obsidian. The significantly less financially well off Sega delayed Alpha Protocol from October 2009 to June 2010 (which was already delayed from February 2009). I'd be surprised if this is as isolated as you seem to think it is.

I never played the original. Was this better done? You seemed to speak more highly of it.

I agreed that you get diminishing returns with the larger companies. Although a good point that with a smaller team, each individual member is potentially much more valuable (I think it depends on the roll as well as the scope of the project). Is this actually the case, or is it what people think it is? As someone with a programmer background myself, I don't expect my programming work to be bug free because of QA. I say that as someone that actually works in QA now. Fortunately, my team has pride in their work and I don't get blamed if something they checked in happened to break something horribly, even if I could have caught it. BioWare has had in house QA for a long time now, and even now there are still aspects that get put out to EAC in Vancouver and whatnot. Does Obsidian not have in house QA because publishers don't allow it? (I use Obsidian because I have seen many state that Fallout New Vegas' issues are a result of poor QA from Bethesda) To be clear, as someone that works in QA, but more importantly is directly involved with the development of it, if BioWare makes a poor and buggy game, I accept that my team is responsible for it, not the outsourced testers that we use from EA. I would feel the same way if I was a programmer. The problem with this perspective is that a game like Mass Effect 3 literally slipped out of the holiday window to release during a less lucrative time. It was done because the game needed it. So it's not absolute. I do agree that it can be a serious concern though. Disagreements over the potential gains for delaying the game will always occur, and they're going to occur with Obsidian and the Kickstarter guys as well. This is not something isolated to big projects. The point is you will always get someone that wants more time to work on their feature. There was a lot of FaceFX work that was done a few days before release of DAO that I didn't even notice had to be done, but was effectively slapping the programmer in the face every time he saw it. It bothered him because he was a programmer and felt ownership over that feature. He wanted it to be awesome. I will agree that a publisher will be more likely to go "the potential gains from continued work are too limited" than someone closer to the development may think, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Feature creep is easily the biggest issue in pushing a project off schedule.

Sigh. The stupid part of this discussion isn't the Ubisoft CEO, but the people that extrapolate misinformation into what he said. People see "PC Piracy rate is 90-95%" (a number I have no idea where it came from), and then go "Uh, that must mean that 60+ million people played Skyrim... yeah right." The statement isn't "The piracy rate of Skyrim PC is 90-95%" as many here seem to think it is. One of the World of Goo developers put the estimates DRM free World of Goo's piracy rate to be about 90%. He admits the numbers aren't precise and that they are just estimates, so it's not like the Ubisoft CEO's statements aren't somewhat corroborated. I would bet that Skyrim does a pretty good job of pulling that estimate downward.

You realize he was referring to the actual article which does demonstrate some of the exaggerations people latched on to, right? No, I think you're misunderstanding me. I have absolutely zero issue with someone not wanting anything they consider intrusive BS on their computer, nor their ability to do what they can to remove it. If you want to be pissed off because a game had DRM that you didn't know about and it installed that stuff on your computer, then fine. If you know that a game has DRM that you don't like, then you're informed enough to move on to a different product. Then do something about it. Don't take part in the industry that perpetuates so many things that you don't like. By doing so, you're exerting your rights as a person to not allow a stupid intrusive BS, hard to remove component from ever being installed on your machine. It sounds like you're doing just this, so we're actually more in agreement than you think. It seems as though I wasn't entirely clear, but I was referring to people that use piracy as a justification to bypass DRMs. You apparently are not someone that does that (good on you!) and I apologize for my lack of clarity in this regard. I don't think you're in favour of theft. I'm anti-DRM myself. Explain it to me then. No, but the topic is about video games, so I didn't feel it was particularly necessary to differentiate it. Explain the big picture to me though. Are there any types of digital products that are deemed essential? You seem to be of the opinion that pirating video games is not black and white, so what are the grey area motivations for acquiring a luxury good that make the waters less murky? Were you confused to whom I was replying to? I type my responses in the quick reply box at the bottom, so my desire to recall to type out name="BasaltineBadger" every time I type out [ quote] isn't particularly high. This perspective is reaffirmed given that you responded to my post just fine.

Because they want to?

Duh. They're obviously trolling obyknven. I figured this was obvious?

There are diminishing returns with larger team sizes, yes, but the types of problems that can occur will in many ways still be an issue. You're still going to have to contend with feature creep. It's going to have to make sure to stay within its budget. It's going to have to iterate to make sure systems are stable and well executed. I'm curious what types of problems you think Obsidian won't have compared to larger budget games? There's the degree of autonomy (although I think that people overestimate the level of influence publishers typically exert, it's certainly not nothing). The biggest advantage of the Kickstarter model is that the game is funded directly by the customer. Meaning, if the game sells no additional copies, but the backers are all satisfied, business can continue. The risks are that we aren't sure how backers will respond when deadlines are missed and features slip. If we're lucky, we get Haunts: The Manse Macabre. Most people seem pretty sympathetic to the developer's woes down the stretch. It's a game that only had $25k in funding though, so the scale may be important.

@Spider Interesting. If that's the case, I likely would have changed as little as possible. I might have even been hard pressed to even add the new characters, although I suppose there's the need to add something new to ensure that there is something of value over the base game.

I haven't really followed the enhanced edition at all because it doesn't appeal to me. Is the idea to simply remake the game for people that loved the original, or was the motivation to rerelease it to introduce those that missed out can play it with relative ease?

This is just a justification in your head to validate the actions. It's a part of the problem. You're also echoing tragedy of the commons. An analogy is that you shouldn't bother recycling because so many other people don't and the impact you make is insignificant on your own. It is undeniable that DRM would be an even greater waste of time and money, and simply could not be justified at all, if piracy was zero. There is nothing that entitles someone to a piece of software. If you go without playing that video game because it has DRM you don't like, the personal cost you take on is simply not playing a video game. But of course, people want to play the video games, so even though the product itself isn't what you like (for cost or DRM reasons), you still want to play it so you do. It's effectively becoming a slave to your desires. Rather than standing up on your principles of not liking DRM, you decide to circumvent it because you still want to play the game. All of the intellectual property rights stuff is just a red herring. You want something, so you're acquiring it. It's all just mental gymnastics to justify it in your head. You don't need it. If you want to stand on principle, don't pirate something simply because you want it. You're undermining your position and your hobby by doing so.