alanschu

The only reason why I'd say that you could consider it an upset is that, if I remember correctly, the previous four times the US and Canada played (not Olympics, obviously), the US won. There was some team shifts and a head coaching change and whatnot that may have helped contribute to some adjustments, however.

Cheap plug for a guy that I respect who has been working on a survival game of his own after leaving BioWare to try his hand at indie stuff: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/17/impressions-neo-scavenger/ EDIT: You can actually play a demo via web browser from here: http://bluebottlegames.com/main/node/21

Good teams often get lucky. As you say, it's not a judged event that has external influences. The players play the game. You could argue it's an upset, I suppose, but both teams are clearly the top 2 in the world and on today, Canada emerged the better team (when it counts). Of course, if you'd prefer to piss on the talented women's team for ****ting the bed and choking or whatever, that's your prerogative. I'm just not a fan of fans like that. I got pissy at Canadians bitching at Cheryl Bernard or Jeremy Wotherspoon in the last Olympics, and prefer to support the athletes regardless of their results because I can't imagine how difficult it is to put yourself in a position to even compete in the Olympics.

Yep. Including some of my friends that I knew personally. Different people like different things.

Sure it is. I think it does a disservice to the USA women's hockey team to claim that they lost it. There's two teams that play and like most highly competitive sports, its a game of inches. They got that opportunity because of some good fortune from the official as well. Good and bad breaks happen in competition, and Canada was able to capitalize.

The question is less "does Keyrock like it" and more "can Keyrock understand why its presence might be seen as a positive for someone else." It seems that way, with your following paragraph. As you say, though, it's reconciling people having different wants that can be mutually exclusive. For instance, the lack of a dialogue wheel was definitely one of the biggest pieces of feedback we got for DAO, but its mere existence is a negative for others. So we put in a brief explanation for bigger choice nodes, but some will say "that you have to do that shows the problem with the wheel" but that seems like it's coming from only a single perspective.

Like Call of Duty? It's important to note that you can also run into issues of the game designers themselves wanting to do different things, and I definitely agree that oversaturation is a huge issue and not just from a consumer standpoint. While I have only ever worked on the Dragon Age franchise, it hasn't gotten stale since each iteration has had different approaches and challenges. I'd consider it bad for gaming if BioWare had just stuck with the Infinity Engine and done nothing but make those isometric games because nothing new would be attempted. One of my favourite juxtapositions is Tim Schafer fans. Tim has made a career out of giving gamers something new and unique with so many of his games. When his kickstarter was active, the loudest and most frequent request types were "make a sequel to a game you made before that I really like!" Now, I take this as a degree of "give me something that will make me feel the way that that game did." Though I think people overlook that the novelty was a contributor. I stopped with Megaman games with Megaman 3 because while they were fun, I was less interested in playing them further. (Ironically, I'd probably be much more open to them now, since I haven't played a game like that in a long time and have fond memories). I always point out to Psychonauts fans: "Imagine if Tim simply made a game that was a sequel to one of his earlier successes, instead of Psychonauts?" What if Super Mario Bros didn't deviate and remained like the original Mario Bros game? Megaman didn't always exist, earlier stuff was created and instead of just making games along established titles at the time, they tried something new. Mario in 2D may still sell, but they also aren't simply keeping the Mario gravy train rolling with minimal changes for consistent releases to saturate both creativity and the market. Because those people took those risks and tried something new, they got huge rewards for doing so. Exclusivity isn't always done because of one of the first party manufacturers paying for it though. Unless you are making all the same machine (at which point, you no longer have competing consoles so it's just a different landscape than it is today). What you've done is mandate that things have a significantly higher fixed cost. Yes, you try to temper that cost through the use of more open standards like OpenGL, but unless the system is identical (i.e. there aren't 3 different consoles) it isn't going to be simply "well press the check box to compile for the other platform." I don't think that there's any advantage to making us have to make Dragon Age for the Vita, PSP, or Wii/Wii-U. But it will be a hell of a lot of work for not very much reward. Neither side holds all the cards. It's a symbiotic relationship. Nintendo compromised their position with the N64 by being a cartridge. Some developers still made games for it, but ultimately it was a barrier to making those games. BioWare doesn't really make games for the Wii, because it's not really worth the time investment. In reality, it's the install base that drives it. The primary reason the Wii isn't seen as viable for us is that it's demographic doesn't support us investing in the console. With enough critical mass, we can make our games for PS3/360 (and XB1/PS4) because of that market, people will pick up the games. Now, if a console developer doesn't have the install base, we could skip it but there's still a game of chicken. A game like GoldenEye may do better simply because gamers for the system are starved for games. This doesn't even factor in things like brand loyalty which will keep some consoles around on that alone.

I dislike the term. There's two teams playing and sometimes things just work out for you or against you.

The water was also pretty fantastic.

The benefit for me (in trying to see it through the eyes of other people) is more akin to "Oh hey, I didn't even realize the game supported this." It can be discovered upon replay, which can be considered a positive. Though if one doesn't actually replay the game, then the effect is wasted. I'd argue that simply knowing "hey, the game definitely reacts to my choices" can be a positive thing for some gamers, even if they only play once (or don't even finish the game).

That's an interesting point. I don't know if there are any exceptions or clarifications to David's statement.

I can see both sides. I think there's pros and cons. You'll lose the sense of discovery on a replay, but it can help cement that alternative playthroughs could exist which may motivate a replay (or simply provide a sense of satisfaction that said choices exist). It says that the dialogue wheel in its prior form doesn't work for some people (which I don't think is a huge surprise).

I agree that the Exxon analogy doesn't really work.

I enjoy that blasphemous comments can both be something like: - Fallout 1 is better than Fallout 2 - Fallout 2 is better than Fallout 1

It's also important to note that whether or not a game is a "failure" by a studio is more dependent on whether or not it reaches expectations, as opposed to whether or not it was "profitable." While I wouldn't be surprised that a game like Bioshock Infinite, if its budget and development woes are true, didn't actually make money, from what I hear games like Tomb Raider were still profitable. It could also mean that larger studios end up diversifying their game library and go wide instead of going deep, which could still help game variety.

Huh! That's definitely not something that I agree with :S The game will eventually come down in price (as all games do), though I couldn't say how long that would take.

Interval training is a good idea if you're seeking to become a better runner. If you seek to get faster, you do run the risk of muscle imbalance as 213374U points out. I'd recommend checking out some hamstring strengthening exercises (glutes could be handy too. My hamstrings weren't weak, but my glutes were which caused my hamstrings to compensate and predisposed them to injury).

To be fair, John released those after the engines were less relevant in the industry (usually once he had made something on a different engine) and id Tech 4 required John to make some changes before release. Having said that, I love that Carmack did all this. But you are correct that a claim that no company has ever done this is incorrect. I'm skeptical that the people here, though, are talking about getting the engine 5+ years after release.

No more Titanfall So probably more BF4 and Horizon!

I don't know if a full crash like the early 80s would happen. IMO the primary reason for that crash was because so many people were trying to cash in that the shelves were filled with utter crap and people stopped buying games. A game like Infinite is, for the most part, considered a good game (I haven't played it). It sounds like it was too expensive, but that can be investigated and refined. With indie and digital development, a void that couldn't be filled easily in 1983 can more easily be filled now. Granted, some of the market may disappear with less prevalance of the "AAA titles," but in terms of the industry itself it'd likely see a dialing back of projects in their scope (which could arguably be a good thing) and it'd probably be helpful for smaller developers like Obsidian.

Given that it affected students and a University for the projects they would be working on, it doesn't seem like the free aspect is relevant at all (the students weren't selling their course projects). Though it *is* likely not the exact same thing because an end user toolset needn't necessarily be the exact same environment than the developer toolset. Though in this case, this means that the toolset developed would require more work developed for it. Good modding tools definitely help with project velocity. That was never disputed. I still contend that the primary reason that lots of mods came out was simply because lots of people picked up the game. I'm immensely skeptical that releasing an end user toolset for Pillars of Eternity would have any meaningful impact on the quantity or quality of future work force developers and be difficult to convince me that this is an appropriate reason to release an end user toolset, because nothing is free. It could potentially compromise the main game. Your concession has complete bearing on the argument. The real question is, what are you willing to give up in the base game to ensure that an end user toolset gets released? The only way an end user toolset gets released is if you take time that would otherwise be spent on the game to do so.

Miracle on Ice may have more to do with how lopsided the game was expected to be, given that only one of the teams was really "amateur." The Cold War probably also played a part (like it did for us with the Summit Series). Canada was pretty damned excited the two times it won gold medals lately, with ridiculous turnout in Vancouver's public spaces around the coliseum to take in the final game.

I haven't really been following Thief so I couldn't say, though I actually agree with your position regarding Irrational Games now, after doing some more reading up on it.

I can't speak specifically as to why Obsidian has no plans to create an end user toolset (my personal opinion is simply that the time investment would probably be better spent on the game, and that user friendly end user tools are not trivial things to do). Unity does have some licensing quirks, however, which I know burned a professor of mine that experimented with it for some game development classes. http://unity3d.com/company/legal/eula "Legal Entities May Not Use Unity Free with Pro Add-ons for the Same Platform" They ran into issue such that students were not allowed to use Unity Free at home, and the Unity Pro provided at school, and as such students had to choose to work on place or another. As such, it's possible that this may compromise things for Obsidian as the tools and game are likely developed to work with Unity Pro, and providing support for Unity Free may run into annoying legalese. There's some chicken and egg problems here, however. Both the latest fallout games were immensely more successful than any of the IE games. As such you simply have a larger pool of potential modders to make content (as well as a larger market to consume the mods). I'd be more inclined to believe that FO3 and FONV would have been very successful games without modding tools, as opposed to modding tools being significant contributors to the games being successful. Unfortunately, while it may seem this way, this is rarely the case. Especially if there is anything third party associated (or stuff that they feel is proprietary and a competitive advantage, like perhaps their conversation editor). Especially if you're hoping for things such as the following: It's providing opportunities for others to learn and grow as artists. A potential source of future employees or indeed competitors. By sharing their tools, they help build a legacy of encouraging new artists. Depending on the discipline, there are a lot of fields that don't have a shortage of applicants. I could also argue that someone that can create mods without end user mod toolsets could possibly come out as an even stronger applicant. Your point gives the impression that without doing this, Obsidian will be compromising the growth of game developers in any significant way. Even though earlier in the thread you concede that without a good game an end user toolset is irrelevant.

Dialogue, in general, may not be "optional" though depending on how one roleplays, whether or not dialogue would be experienced could still be optional. Romances are technically optional, but we've established that that is seen as unfair towards those that do not like romances. But how about a companion quest? If it is not required to finish the game, it could be considered "optional" and if the companion quest was to kill an NPC (that maybe you liked), you could choose to not do it as part of your RP experience. Should something like this only exist if there is an alternative piece of content to make up for not doing this particular quest? I can see both sides of this with various pros and cons, though I actually agree with you with respect to the Underdark choice. Fair or not, a player will feel "punished," even if it could be valid that "hey, not all choices are equal." It's been a while since I last played Bloodlines. Do the other vampire groups have equivalent quests to the Tremere ones? (I think some might, but not all. Not sure) I imagine "you got some unique content because of the class you chose" would be irksome, unless each class received their own unique content?