Bartlett's Quotable Game Developers: A Work in Progress

I can probably count the number of Japanese games I've played in the last few years on ONE HAND. Dark Souls, Dragon May Cry, Super Mario Shine Get Galaxy 5 and maybe a couple others. Suffice is to say I play very few of them nowadays vs the earlier years when the console space was dominated by them and western studios made the cutting edge PC games. It was a grand old time.

Is that related to the success of the 360? Suddenly you have a successful platform which has a minimal presence in Japan, so there's no longer a need to appeal to that market.

Or not. I don't follow that scene.

Although this thread seems to be for ridiculing Game Developers with foot-in-mouth disease, I don't really see anywhere else to put this, and I think it's notable for its candor nonetheless. John Smedley is the president of Sony Online Entertainment. SOE are the developers for Planetside 2, the game this message refers to.

I approve:

Heh, except by tweeting it, the scumbag gets more exposure to his site than he deserves. Unless of course some anonymous type group goes and destroys his site, in which case I withdraw my complaint.

Yea, the same thought occurred to me, and my only explanation is that the same people who would be directed to the hacker's site by this tweet might think twice about buying a hack/aimbot/whatever that Sony is already aware of and capable of dealing with. So by directly acknowledging the site Smedley could also be telling any other would-be aimbotters that it's just not worth their time to give their business to that site/hacker/whatever, or any other site in general.

I guess it's all about setting an example.

If you have a PS3, you should play Tokyo Jungle, yo.

Is that the new Devil May Cry/Dragon's Dogma mashup game I've been hearing so much about?

Yes, Dragon's Dogma. I've played Tokyo Jungle actually.

I'd say PC developers switching to make console games changed the whole scene coupled with the growing number of players. This dates back to the first Xbox. Simply surmising, I'd like to think no one was really trying to appeal to the Japan market except for Japan. Any appeal from the west being merely a symbolic gesture since Japan had become so dominate after American's mid 80's video game industry crash.

I have to say it is quite fun to see Japan making games that try to appeal to us!

I just tried going there and it isn't a registered domain, or the whole thing went belly up, so either he didn't post the real url, or he somehow got it taken down first.

Though I haven't tried to visit the site (I just assumed I'd get a virus), there's a ton of Youtube clips attributed to that person/site/group/whatever.

David Cage is so damn pretentious and stupid, it hurts. I mean he might have a point if he didn't produce one of the most cliché-ridden and badly written game of this generation... But come on, Dave, look in the mirror.

I wonder what Godard or Truffaut would think of Heavy Rain. I really do.

Cage doesn't seem to get that if the press was more analytical, instead of receiving the heaps of praise Heavy Rain got, the writers would have torn him a new one.

Truffaut would have retroactively changed the title of his most famous film to The 400 Shauns.

Point of order: Cage is not a game developer. He is farther away from it than someone who makes choose your own adventure movies, as he actively seeks to undercut everything that is game-like about games. The "lifelike" qtes are a knife in the back of anyone who has ever tried to do something evocative with mechanics, and the way he can confidently talk about the quality of his writing is an insult to anyone who can read a book. Any book. Odds are good you'll get something better.

John Walker at RPS has a pretty good rant on Cage.

"Throw enough batshit at the crazywall, see what sticks."

E: quotes are fun

"But he is not the Pied Piper gaming should be following, unless we all want to drown in a river of quick-time events and Indigo Children."

I still think that the diner scene in Indigo Prophecy was really awesome for it's time. Then the game descended into madness and zombie-sex and alien light creatures but there was a hint of something great there.

Well, there's one fun bit over here:

I really like the effort that goes into being a game developer (allegedly), and still regarding this as a question where "technology" is enabling the "better pen" to write a better book, and that being analogous to the engine in a game. The metaphor is appalling in its own right. It also shows what Cage thinks in terms of the role that mechanics and technology *AND* story play in the actual creation of game experiences. I mean, it's not just that he doesn't understand what's interesting about old movies, or that he's simply got no taste in terms of writing and the actual construction of good writing (hint: it has little to do with the pen). It's this complete detachment from actually developing a game as a game that makes him such a magnificent fraud.

The Citizen Kane of Gaming.

Or maybe it's this.

Lost Planet is one wonderful example. It was intended as game for western audiences, which is why it features the following:

- Protagonist that's based on a Korean pop star's likeness
- Absolutely bonkers control scheme
- Nonsensical storyline
- Weird gameplay mechanics such as a constantly depleting energy bar that is your life, fuel and ammo

I didn't end up hating the game, but at times it was frustrating to play through.

Which is why you should play it in co-op, as god intended, and enjoy the craziness, the three-person mecha, and fighting monsters big enough to swallow you whole and have the combat continue inside of them.

LP2 was one of those games, that if it had been handled just a little bit better, would've been amazing.

Dude, it had robots with laser chainsaws. It had you do a boss battle via three person train artillery! It WAS amazing!

It had so many little problems though, that kept it from being amazing for me. I had a good time, but it could've been so much more.

MODESTY ISN'T ONE OF THE EIGHT VIRTUES

“But other than a few exceptions, like Chris Roberts, I’ve met virtually no one in our industry who I think is close to as good a game designer as I am. I’m not saying that because I think I’m so brilliant. What I’m saying is, I think most game designers really just suck, and I think there’s a reason why.”

---

“And every designer that I work with—all throughout life—I think, frankly, is lazy.”

- Richard Garriott, on why he thinks the old stuff better than the new stuff

That was a hilarious interview for its sheer lack of content. "I'm a great designer, because I'm a great designer! Because I do great design. You can tell, because those other people suck at design. And I do not. Conclusion: great designer."

I can't wait to see how his Shroud of the Avatar game turns out. I'll keep the popcorn ready.

I am breathless for the reviews.

Now I kinda feel bad about being so amused by that interview.

The best heroes are dead heroes.

aw, that's unfair. GRiN was a good studio, they didn't go out of business because they sucked.

Just to refresh my memory of why I don't think it'll be any good I went and watched the Zero Punctuation review of Tabula Rasa again. Then I thought it wasn't nearly as mean as it should have been.

I've noticed, that after the CoH shutdown, some people who've jumped on the hatetrain have now reframed the failure of Tabula Rasa as having been all NCSoft's fault for forcing him to release before it was ready and squandering his Vision. =P

Gamers have really crappy historical memories.

There was a lot of talk in some channels that NCsoft didn't support Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa enough, which is why those titles failed. If only they'd gotten out of Garriott's way, he'd have truly been able to deliver something special to gamers.

Yeah, well...

Auto Assault failed because it was a terrible game from the word go. "It's like WoW, but not as good, and all the orcs and elves have been replaced with CARS!" is not a good idea for a game.

I was in one of the very early betas for the game, and I couldn't even be bothered to attempt to playtest it, as the whole concept of the game was just that bad.

And worse, it killed off any hope of a true Car Wars type MMO. Hell, I'm really surprised that their isn't an World of Tanks style F2P I-76 style game.

Why don't you tell Wargaming NA about it? Or start a petition?

They already have a land based vehicle combat engine, it wouldn't be more complex to make then their other titles.