Do You Think Obsidian Has Done A Good Job On K2?

[moteldiscoverde]

For me the game is cool. Very god job.

[jaguars4ever]

I saw much, much more that I liked than I disliked in k2 - and I'm confident that Obsidian can release extremely competent games in the future.

[Judge Hades]

AgainstOne, since you are a game developer, according to what you have said, please enlighten us what games you have made.

 

Obsidian is a start up company and has zero clout to push their publisher around. They pretty much have to do what the publisher, Lucas Arts in this case, say or no money or worse (like a lawsuit). Once they have established themselves then they can do as you say, but start up companies just can't do that if they want to remain in business. If you want Obisidian to fix KotOR 2, which I know they are very much willing to do you need to target the publisher, Lucas Arts. That is what I would do.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

That is what I would do.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The problem with that is that it may lead to LA seeing Obsidian as a problem company. If LA were to wash it's hands of KOTOR as of part III , then they could pretty much give it to anyone and still make a fast buck on the name.

 

I still think KOTOR II has given me better value than a lot of other games with tighter endings. So I'm not going to get all shirty about what might have been, especially since I may have liked what might have been even less.

[AgainstOne]

It's the bird in the hand thing.

 

A thousand bucks in the bank is better than a million well-wishes and pats on the back.

 

while that may be true to an extent, consider this. would you rather:

 

A) take the easy money now and damage your reputation and any sales of your future products.

 

B) take a loss now, but in doing so, make a great name for yourself by doing a great job and having throngs of satisfied customers coming back for your products again and again.

 

i know i for one have read countless people posting on this forum, on lucasarts' forum, and in the petition saying they will never buy another game developed by obsidian.

 

if it were me, and lucasarts was as demanding as you people seem to think, i would have either:

 

A) hired more people to ensure i could get the job done to my standards and on time

 

B) passed on it.

 

and don't say they didn't have the luxury to pass on it because, from what i've read, they've been working on neverwinter nights 2 for over a year, which puts them starting on that at about the same time they started on KotOR2, so they were getting the rent paid.

 

If you, as you claim, are a developer, you should know that this is a real killer for a product, when you have to start cutting on your feature list on a short notice.

 

i have to admit, the software development environment that i work in is different in that if the customer needs a release by a certain date and we have to cut back on some features, they know that those features can be added in the next release. now if they MUST HAVE certain features and including those features is going to push the release out, then that's just tough for them. we tell them point blank, if you want these features, it will take this long. if you need it sooner, you'll have to figure out which features you want cut and if you can't live with any of the features being cut, then you won't get it by when you are wanting it.

 

And when the developer is new and doesn't (didn't) have it's own QA department, it was all in the hands of the publisher, determining both if and when it was fit for release.

 

i don't know how many people are seeing red flags going up over a situation like this, but to me there flying all over the place. i WOULD NEVER agree to something like that. if my name is on the product, i will be testing it to make damn sure there is no backlash against me for any bugs or problems that should have been caught.

 

OE really dropped the ball in that arena. this is why i am not forgiving of OE on this one. they KNOW better. they are not just some small startup company that doesn't know any better about how the whole process works. OE is made up of people who have had their collective hands in creating some of the greatest PC games in the world. there is no excuse whatsoever they can give for this extreme lack of judgement.

 

first of all, everyone knows KotOR was buggy. everybody knows that. the beauty of KotOR was that the story was so excellent that we could all look past the bugs. any smart developer knows that you cannot take a buggy engine, mix it up and throw it around and NOT test the result! there aren't enough words to describe how irresponsible that was.

 

i am extremely disappointed in OE in this respect. they knew better.

 

Not a situation I would put people in, if I could avoid it.

 

not a situation i would have put myself in. and i that, i mean that if those were the terms, i'd have to pass.

 

Given that, I thought they did quite well, what they managed to come up with.

 

that is just blatantly making excuses for their utter incompetence.

 

As for the technical side of things, both 1 and 2 had an existing engine that needed reworking to fit their needs. In this case, I would consider it a fair assumption that engine work happens simultaneously with the game content (assets, story etc.) work, as some engine features might depend on requirements from the actual game design.

 

i do not agree with you at all on this point. if i know anything, i know that it is a whole helluvalot easier to take existing code and modify it than it is to write it from scratch. i believe it took at least half of

 

It's a fun thing about writing... it doesn't go ten times faster because you put ten authors to write ten different chapters in a story. There are things where you can't force results by adding more manpower, it simply requires time.

 

you might be right about that, but, you see, it doesn't even apply in this case. why? because the story was there. the story was written and the story is awesome. the travesty is that they did not implement more than half of that wonderful story into the game.

 

By comparison, that gives the first game 3 years of story writing, character and plot development etc. The second game had 1 year.

 

you are not taking into account that it took a good year and a half to develop the game engine.

 

what it all boils down to is that they failed. they failed to implement their vision for the game. they had a vision, and it was a grand one, and for whatever reasons, they failed to implement it. no matter how you want to look at it, they failed.

 

either they failed at negotiating a contract that could see their vision come to fruition or they failed in hiring enough people to get the job done. likewise, they failed in overseeing the QA portion to ensure that the bugs were worked out and that the story came together.

 

if the time constraint was the problem, then they should have either pushed the release out or hired more people to get the job done. if lucasarts was being too rigid with the contract and forcing them into unrealistic constraints, fine, pass on it and let them give the contract to someone else. in that case, atleast OE's name wouldn't be the one getting dragged through the mud right now.

 

no matter how you slice it, they failed and failed miserably. when i finished this game i was like, "Huh?" i had lost track of the incoherent story long before the ending. when i found aurora's 45 page thread here and read the whole thing through, there were so incredibly many people that said the exact same thing, "Huh?".

 

"What happened to all the time i spent gaining influence over my party?"

"What happened to my party?"

"Why are there so many subplots in the game that never get resolved?"

"Why does G0-T0 stop T3-M4 from stabilizing Malachor and then nothing whatsoever comes from that subplot?"

"Why does my totally demolished ship fly up at the end (now completely unscathed) to rescue me?"

 

the list goes on and on and on. this is not just an opinion that i have. thousands of people feel the same way i do.

 

i am still having a hard time understanding just how a this group of very respected developers dropped the ball so hard that an unprecedented movement is taking place against their product. for Christ's sake they have a petition against them to finish this game. the petition is less than a month old and already it has garnered 6285 signatures! if that doesn't tell you they released an unfinished game, i don't know what will!!! i am 31 years old; i have been gaming since the atari 2600 and i have never heard of such an outcry from the user community.

 

but whatever, go on pretending that they did a good job and that this is a great game. the fact is that it is a sloppily thrown together piece of incoherent babble that does not deserve the honor of being the sequel to one of the greatest RPGs of all time.

 

shame on you obsidian, SHAME ON YOU. you knew better.

 

what did you do Feargus? did MicroSoft or LucasArts come to you after the grand reception KotOR2 received at E3 and bribe you? did they offer you a sizeable bonus if you could get it released for the holiday season (while the buzz around it was still strong)? did you sacrifice all of us in the process? i hope you can live with your decisions, but better yet, i hope those decisions come back to haunt you (and force you to live with them).

[jaguars4ever]

Enough with the "shaming", and tell us what games you've made.

[AgainstOne]

AgainstOne, since you are a game developer, according to what you have said, please enlighten us what games you have made.

 

first of all, i never said i was a game developer. i said that i was a software developer. the fact is that i am a software engineer for the world's largest defense contractor (if you don't know who that is, try your favorite search engine).

 

Obsidian is a start up company and has zero clout to push their publisher around.  They pretty much have to do what the publisher, Lucas Arts in this case, say or no money or worse (like a lawsuit).  Once they have established themselves then they can do as you say, but start up companies just can't do that if they want to remain in business.  If you want Obisidian to fix KotOR 2, which I know they are very much willing to do you need to target the publisher, Lucas Arts.  That is what I would do.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

that is far too naive and far too easy an out for them and that's just what they want you to believe, i'm sure. the fact is that obsidian is made up of the folks from black isle (black = obsidian, get it?). if you knew anything about black isle, you would know that they primarily worked on sequels to bioware games. bioware creates the original games and the engines, black isle creates the sequels using those engines.

 

from this knowledge, you can see that this contract was practically handed to them by bioware (KotOR was indeed a bioware game and it is customary for bioware to hand it's sequels off to black isle, which is now obsidian). furthermore, they have enough clout in that they are made up of folks who have had major roles in creating some of the greatest PC games ever. they also have the clout of bioware on their side, as bioware had no small part in getting obsidian the contract to do this sequel.

 

you say, "Once they have established themselves..."? how's a 6300 signature petition against their company's first product doing for establishing themselves? you think that is helping establish themselves? i tend to think quite the opposite.

 

you are quite correct in that if anything is to be done to fix this game, LA is the one to put pressure on. hopefully, as this news and petition grows and grows, LA will see how many people are saying they will not be buying KotOR3 if KotOR2 is not fixed. hopefully they will start to see this as little dollar signs floating away and they will start to care. none of that, however, takes the blame off of obsidian for releasing this game unfinished.

[AngryTarsier]

he's techie that designs the sim & stuff for the military..

 

btw who released the game?? LA or Obsidian?

[AgainstOne]

Enough with the "shaming", and tell us what games you've made.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

hey, i have an idea! why don't you focus on 1 word from my 1,242 word argument, then try to discredit me by insinuating that i haven't made any games so i must not know what i'm talking about. oh, that's already what you did!

 

luckily for me, any intelligent person will see right through that weak attempt. i have numerous valid points and if you don't care to discuss any of those, or anything else intelligent for that matter, then i don't really care to waste any more of my time on you.

 

btw who released the game?? LA or Obsidian?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

regardless of who released the game to the public, OE had to have "released" the game to LA before they could ever think about publishing it.

[AngryTarsier]

one word. money

[JediExile]

I believe the game is a good one. The characters in this one I like better then in the first one, but the plot twists in the first were better. They made me go wow in the first while the second I was just mildly suprized here and there. I do like the way they tied the story into Revan and leave you wondering whats going to happen next.

[AgainstOne]

one word. money

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

putting money above your reputation as a software developer is just long-term suicide. where does the money come from in the future when the disgruntled fans shun their subsequent products? you'd think they don't want their new company to suffer the same fate as the old one, but i can't tell from their current practices.

[Dimeron]

I think Obsidian did a great job on KOTOR 2.

 

For the most part, the game was excellent. It is very unfortunate that the last 1/5th of the game was so lackluster. But that can be forgiven once the community or obsidian (hopefully) put back the proper endings.

 

Now, as a software programmer, I know there will be bugs. There will always be bugs. Especially when you have a small company working on such a huge project under such strict deadline. And I can definitely understand why there were bugs. (Not saying I approve though)

 

And finally, I would just like to say despite the fact I thought it was a great game, I think it fell short of its potentials. IMO obsidian might be a bit too ambitious for a startup. While the game was good, I believe the game could have exceeded its predecessors if only it was managed better. Some parts really could have been cut, and some other parts really shouldn

[jaguars4ever]

Enough with the "shaming", and tell us what games you've made.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

hey, i have an idea! why don't you focus on 1 word from my 1,242 word argument, then try to discredit me by insinuating that i haven't made any games so i must not know what i'm talking about. oh, that's already what you did!

 

luckily for me, any intelligent person will see right through that weak attempt. i have numerous valid points and if you don't care to discuss any of those, or anything else intelligent for that matter, then i don't really care to waste any more of my time on you.

 

Do that trick again Troll - you know, the one where your mouth opens and your head explodes!

 

Man, with your grandiose 2 wpm typing rate, have you ever considered that you're in the wrong occupation? Or is that just natural incompetence?

[Gorth]

I was going to write an awfully long and detailed explanation for AgainstOne why the earth is round, despite it being flat from his perspective.

 

Unfortunately, the quoting kept getting screwed up for me, so I decided, some things aren't worth the bother of proper quoting, much less valuable time.... ;)"

 

first of all, i never said i was a game developer. i said that i was a software developer. the fact is that i am a software engineer for the world's largest defense contractor (if you don't know who that is, try your favorite search engine).

That would explain why the missile tests keep failing...

[SteveThaiBinh]

A) take the easy money now and damage your reputation and any sales of your future products.

 

B) take a loss now, but in doing so, make a great name for yourself by doing a great job and having throngs of satisfied customers coming back for your products again and again.

 

i have to admit, the software development environment that i work in is different in that if the customer needs a release by a certain date and we have to cut back on some features, they know that those features can be added in the next release.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, it makes no sense to choose option A, which is why it seems likely that there was something else going on. As a software developer, who plays the equivalent role of 'publisher' for you? Who or what is 'the customer' you mentioned, and how do you interact? Do you know of any cases where that relationship has had problems which might shed light on what happened here? I'd be interested to read about that. I find it difficult to believe that the defense industry is without its fair share of flawed software.

 

first of all, everyone knows KotOR was buggy.  everybody knows that.  the beauty of KotOR was that the story was so excellent that we could all look past the bugs.  i am extremely disappointed in OE in this respect.  they knew better.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

For the people whose games were severely disrupted by bugs, Kotor wasn't such a great experience initially, I think. However, the game was patched and became stable and playable for nearly everyone. Many of the PC players will be happy when the bug-fix patch for Kotor 2 comes out, and some of the dissatisfaction with the game will subside. What I think is strange is that they released the game on the X-Box first, but the X-Box version can't be patched, it seems. Surely the sensible thing to do would have been to release the game on the PC, get the bugs fixed in a patch, and then put it out on X-Box. I wonder what Microsoft's reaction has been to the unhappiness of X-Box gamers, or perhaps that's not something they would get involved in.

 

what it all boils down to is that they failed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This doesn't take into account that many people here have written about how much they enjoyed the game, and even those with criticisms have often replayed the game several times, myself included. I can accept that certain aspects of the game failed to live up to their full potential, but to say the game as a whole was a failure doesn't match my experience. I refer you to several 'Why I liked this game' threads, which detail the good features of the game, many of which are hard to find in other comparable products.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

If he works for who I think he does, he's really nothing but a keyboard monkey. Living life like a mushroom...

 

KOTOR II's story was far more compelling than KOTOR's regardless of how it ended.

 

Putting money first is only long term suicide when your working with niche games. In the real world of big publishers your only as good as your last product. Playing the publisher game is part of the business.

 

Look at PST. people laud it constantly, it sold like crap.

LA released some truly awful games prior to KOTOR I and II and yet people went out and bought those games in droves.

Once NwN hits the market KOTOR II will be all but forgotten and that will be the new benchmark by which Obsidian is judged.

[Orchomene]

Ok, stop bashing someone who doesn't agree with you. Just discuss a bit.

Sure, as a developer, obsidian is responsible of the result and LA responsible for selling it unfinished. I won' t blame OE or LA on one mistake (at least OE since it's their first product as a new team). I will just keep an eye on the subsequent game made.

 

To add a bit, I'm not sure you can easily compare software development for military use and game development. In the first case, the customenr has a strong hand on the final product and we know quite well that we, gamers, don't have a word on it. The natural opposition between a developer who can need more time and the publisher who wants a final product as soon as it can is not resolved by the same machanics when there is no interference with the customer.

 

Sure, OE could have handled it better, sure QA is lacking and the missing part are quite abruptly cut. It's a fault, but one I will pass on since I had actually few bugs and everybody can do mistakes.

 

A last word about the time it takes between creating a new engine and modifying/using an other one. You are a bit too strict in your opinion. I had to modify a very bad written code (a data base poorly coded with heavy dats I had to opperate on, I think you can imagine how awful it was). I tried very hard to correct the code, but in the end, the debugging part was too heavy and I had to create a new structure, add a bit of the old that I tested and debugged. So, sometimes, if you have a poorly documented bug-heavy code, you take more time to correct it than to create a new one. I don't know how it was in this case and what support from bioware (with respect to disponibility) they had, so it's difficult to judge.

 

I think in the end, OE did a not satisfying job in terms of professionnality but a good job in term of creation/conception. Maybe they lack a strong organization in their project or they didn't manage to 'secure' the development in taking into account the time they could lose in the implementation of their design.

[jaguars4ever]

If he works for who I think he does, he's really nothing but a keyboard monkey. Living life like a mushroom...

This chimp needs to get beat down...where's kumquatq3 when you need him? ^_^

 

----

 

I was going to write an awfully long and detailed explanation for AgainstOne why the earth is round, despite it being flat from his perspective.

 

Unfortunately, the quoting kept getting screwed up for me, so I decided, some things aren't worth the bother of proper quoting, much less valuable time....  "

 

first of all, i never said i was a game developer. i said that i was a software developer. the fact is that i am a software engineer for the world's largest defense contractor (if you don't know who that is, try your favorite search engine).

That would explain why the missile tests keep failing...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I think this guy has was it takes to lead Iraq's Nuclear Defense program, Gorth.

[Darth Hoebag]

Pretty damn good job, could have been better, could have been a lot worse too.

 

As for truely evil things, nothing more overtly evil or wnaton than could be done in the first one.

 

One of my favorites...

 

[Force Persuade]Give me all your money and jump off that docking platform. (on a Taris like world, miles above the surface)

 

Also...

 

You picked the wrong room to barge into buddy!

Me - Yeah? Well you picked the wrong room to die in. Followed by canderous saying "That one had it coming!"

 

just made me laugh.

[LifeStar]

I'd say they did an "OK" job with the job. Though I understand how tough it is to release a game in one year, but quality should never be sacrificed for the deadline. Esp. if those bugs are considered "show stoppers."

 

I work at a software company myself and do a lot of quality assurance on my company's products. Bugs like these where the program crashes within a certain time frame, performance begins to bog down, and other errors that are not the user's fault would never be acceptable to my company. Primarily b/c we care about our reputation and the last thing we need is to give people reasons to not buy our software, or worst yet complain about it so much that it gives us a bad reputation for our future releases.

 

Either case, Obsidian & LA should never allowed more time to develop this and do more quality testing. The story definitely should have not been cut as much, but the reality of so many bugs in the code is most unacceptable in my opinion.

[AgainstOne]

Enough with the "shaming", and tell us what games you've made.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

hey, i have an idea! why don't you focus on 1 word from my 1,242 word argument, then try to discredit me by insinuating that i haven't made any games so i must not know what i'm talking about. oh, that's already what you did!

 

luckily for me, any intelligent person will see right through that weak attempt. i have numerous valid points and if you don't care to discuss any of those, or anything else intelligent for that matter, then i don't really care to waste any more of my time on you.

 

Do that trick again Troll - you know, the one where your mouth opens and your head explodes!

 

Man, with your grandiose 2 wpm typing rate, have you ever considered that you're in the wrong occupation? Or is that just natural incompetence?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

OMG, the irony! calling me a troll? i was simply replying to the original poster's question with my honest opinion on the matter. and then trying to engage in an intelligent discussion about the subject. on the other hand, what is it exactly that you are doing? well, from the following definition of a troll that i found on dictionary.com, i'd say when you were calling someone a troll, you must have been looking in the mirror and not realized it:

 

"An individual who ... regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net."

 

i know i said i wouldn't be wasting any more of my time on your ignorance, but that was just too ironic and too precious to pass up.

 

and furthermore, how could you possibly have any clue as to how fast i type? and what relevance would that have to this argument? further proof of your trolling.

[AgainstOne]

Orchomene and SteveThaiBinh, thank you both for adding intelligent input to the conversation. This quality of our arguments seem to be lost on the numerous trolls replying to this thread, who would rather resort to personal attacks (against someone they know absolutely nothing about) than discuss things intelligently, perhaps because they are not capable.

 

 

 

I was going to write an awfully long and detailed explanation for AgainstOne why the earth is round, despite it being flat from his perspective.

 

Unfortunately, the quoting kept getting screwed up for me, so I decided, some things aren't worth the bother of proper quoting, much less valuable time....  "

Gorth, i'm sorry it is too hard for you to reply to my arguments.

[AgainstOne]

As a software developer, who plays the equivalent role of 'publisher' for you?  Who or what is 'the customer' you mentioned, and how do you interact?  Do you know of any cases where that relationship has had problems which might shed light on what happened here?  I'd be interested to read about that.  I find it difficult to believe that the defense industry is without its fair share of flawed software.

 

since you seem to be one of the very few posting here that would actually like to engage in an intelligent conversation, i'd be happy to oblige .

 

As a software developer, who plays the equivalent role of 'publisher' for you?  Who or what is 'the customer' you mentioned, and how do you interact?

 

our customer is the publisher. they largely determine the budget our projects receive. our customer (and the term "customer" is what is commonly used here when referring to them) is the head of the program that we are currently building software tools for. what happens is that we have meetings with the customer and they tell us what they need and their need date. we go into analysis phase and determine exactly how long we think it will take to deliver what they need, which is almost always far past their need date.

 

they then have the option to negotiate to take features out of the product to get it delivered by their need date. if there are no features they can sacrifice, then they have very few options other than to accept our proposal. one option they have is to go to our department head and express the urgency, in which case more budget may be alotted to our department for hiring more people to work on the project. my team is currently made up of 7 people, 2 of which just joined in the past 2 months. we are starting on some very important tools and they could not live with our estimates, and subsequently we got budget to hire those 2 people.

 

Do you know of any cases where that relationship has had problems which might shed light on what happened here?

 

our customer happens to be the most important program in the entire company. if you have already figured out what company this is and you do a very small amount of research, you can find out what program that is. i would tell you, but it is possible that i could get in trouble for divulging information and i don't want to risk it. anyway, they are very important and they are very used to getting what they want. in fact, when we tell them we can't deliver to their deadlines, they usually get pretty irate and start demanding things from the department head (who is my supervisor's supervisor's supervisor's supervisor). she then negotiates with them and (generalizing here) tells them they will need to hand over some budget to get more people on it if they want it by that date.

 

it is not uncommon for weak-willed supervisors to give in to the kind of pressure they exert. luckily, our team's supervisor is tough on that front and doesn't cave. the alternative is releasing unfinished products that will only ultimately result in disappointing the customer and subsequently looking very bad on the records of the developers involved.

 

like in game development, whose publisher facilitates distribution of the product to the end user, our "publisher" is not the one who will actually be using our products. they mainly distribute our tools to outside contractors who use them. i do not see how obsidian developing for lucasarts could be much different. it appears to me that feargus is just not a very savvy negotiator.

[Tsel]

i do not see how obsidian developing for lucasarts could be much different.  it appears to me that feargus is just not a very savvy negotiator.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Maybe, but you must also take into account that the State of California

poses a lot of business problems that don