f13.net

Link (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1515217&tid=187&tid=10).

It just dawned on me. In the next 5 years, they're going to make an attempt to enter the console or portable market. Why the fuck didn't I see this before?

Well, that's the death knell for another fairly good studio.  

Battlefield 2 will still be decent, because it's almost completely finished.  Anything after that will undoubtedly have the mark of suck upon it.

Damn shame, though really I stopped caring about DICE when they stopped making pinball games.

I need to replay Pinball Dreams one of theese days.

I was always partial to Pinball Illusions.

I lost my CD years ago and wish I could find another one.

And no, abandonware doesn't work because the non-CD versions only had 3 tables instead of 4. It's that 4th table I enjoyed the most.

That was another great CD32 game.

Got GBA/SP/DS? Enjoy (http://www.rewiredmind.com/review.php?r=51).

(Yes, I have it, in case you wonder, and yes, it recreates both games perfectly. Except there is no battery save for highscores so that bit is pointless.)

That link looks like a case of bad timing.

Well, they did release Pinball Dreams for the SNES.  Plays pretty good too.  I found it cheap off Ebay.

Sega is now done with sports games.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/01/24/news_6117016.html

Thankfully, I don't play sports games, so I don't care.

You can still weep, because there's a bigger (sadder) message here: In the world of video games, the good things never last.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Goddamit, fuck you EA.


Apoligies to Ferguson.

Mothercockratbagassfuckshiteatingdonkeydongs.

What the fuck does Sega have left? What have they published in the last 2 years besides Sega GT Online that has been worth a good goddamn other than the Visual Concepts titles? Did I just miss some titles? I mean, is Sonic Adventures selling or some shit?

As for EA and DICE, I called this one the minute BF1942 was a hit. Countdown to DICE shutdown and talent absorption: T-Minus 1 year and counting. Maybe 2 years at the most.

And Battlefield 2? It will be a shinier version of Battlefield 1942. With less new features. And less mod support. And ass netcode. Anything DICE ever did that was original will be leeched out in decision by committee and publisher-mandated deadline crunching.

Fuck you, EA, you lousy bunch of pigfuckers.

I'm scandalized!

Admittedly not enough to keep a large company rolling.

Are you capable of not cursing?

Sega did release Outrun 2 and Shining Force recently.  Co published though.  Outrun 2 with Microsoft, and Shining Force with Atlus.  And apparently 2 other companies are going to be releasing their Sega Ages Arcade and Sega Ages Phantasy Star games.

But yeah, Sega really has fallen on hard times as of late.  Its not all due to the high cocksuckery of EA though.  Its like when the Dreamcast failed they lost a lot of their love for life in general.. :(

Wicked deja vu.

Windurst, two things.

1) if you're commenting on Haemish's potty mouth, you should just quote the cursing.  Besides being a fun read, it'd make the site more manageable.  I realize I'm picking on you, since people frequently post 3 page quotes followed by 'me too' here, but it's never a bad time to take a stand.

2) Many people here are capable of cursing and indeed enjoy cursing.  The sentence enhancement provides an invective bouquet that frames and hones their rage and/or boredom.  If that sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, you may consider whether it's more reasonable for someone to walk into a bar and complain about everyone's drinking or rather to decide that a bar isn't the place for them.

It doesn't bother me... I was just wondering if he was capable of not cursing... since he seems to curse in every post he makes

Cursing is like screaming.... the more you do it,  the less effective it becomes.

It's really about having an ear for it, not just the frequency.  Minimalist Japanese sumi-e brush painting can be just as evocative as a busy Bruegel and vice versa.  Haemish is sort of the Jackon Pollock of swearing, and that guy's fucking loaded.

Well said.

Well things are going so well for EA they decided to do the only obvious thing left to increase their stock.  They fired 60 devs, programmers and managers. (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/01/26/news_6117158.html)  I guess this makes sense, keep buying up dev houses so they can't make competing games then keep firing people, leaving them twisting in the wind, cause you have no reason to actually work hard on your rehashed titles.

edited for windurst:  motherfuck ea

Wait, that's awesome.  All of the fired devs should get together and form a development house.  Then they can make exciting and innovative games, get bought by EA, watch their games turn to trash, get fired, and do it again.

It's the cycle of life.

I wish someone would just bomb EA already....

Ya know, not actually Hurt anyone, but just put a gaping hole in EA's activities....maybe then we could see more Good games...

Ya know, as opposed to what we have now, which is just a constant onslaught of attempts by EA to put gamers in the piledriver position and rape them with reckless abandon.

Dear EA,

Please buy out Playnet next so I can roll around in millions and millions of your sweet dollars.

Thank you,

Bruce

Man, what the hell are they doing over there? EA is becoming the MS of video games.

It seems to me that a company focused on destroying quality gaming would be indistinguishable from EA. Buy a dev house, milk their existing properties with a lackluster sequel, fire everybody, wash, rinse, repeat. So many series they have run into the ground, for what? So they can reshuffle some personel into EA "big" sports titles?

Actually, from what people have said of working conditions there, getting fired might be a relief.

Alkiera

Here is a serious question: What are some original games that EA has actually created in-house?

EDIT: Anything they purchase is considered "in-house" as far as EA is concerned.

These days, most of the games published by EA are developed "in house" but that's because their corporate strategy is to buy up development houses that have created successful games that EA published. This includes companies like:

Origin
Westwood Studios
Maxis
Bullfrog
Manley and Associates (kids/educational games)
Black Box (Need for Speed)
Tiburon (sports games like Madden)
DreamWorks Interactive (Medal of Honor)
NuFX (NBA Street)
Studio 33 (Destruction Derby)
Pogo.com (Internet-based games)
DICE

and so on.

No, and fuck you for asking.

EDIT: And to add actual content to this post, I would personally like to take the imaginary entity that is Electronics Arts entire executive staff, and make sweet, sweet love to their every orifice, starting with their earholes and eyesockets. I think that once my lust for their tender holes is sated, then I might be able to dispose of the collective corpse with the dignity and prestige it deserves; namely an acid bath to wash the flesh and other disreputable bits off their useless bones. Then I would snap the bones and suck out the marrow.

See, no cursing whatsoever. Pigfucker.

I've always found that it is much easier to propound true obscenity if you are well-spoken and polite.  It is sort of like moral lubrication.

As to EA, they are buying talent, but are they keeping it?

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3137918

"Layoffs and Restructuring at EA LA
EA's Southern Cali office "rebalanced"  "

Reminded of a line from a rap song..

"Will Smith doesn't hafta cuss to sell records.
Yeah, well I do.  So f--- him, and f--- you too."

So, is a comparison to Eminem a good thing, Haemish?

Alkiera

This has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the topic, but it made me laugh when Will Smith made the point that he didn't need to swear to sell records... 'cause he sure as fuck does to sell his movies! *coughbadboyscough*

Anyways, continue on.

I dig Eminem, and would be honored by such a comparison.

This is the result of what I thought 30 seconds after I read Windurst's posts. Sorry for the crudeness of it, you see 2 minutes and a mouse doesn't produce much.

(http://www.f13.net/schild/windurst_playground.jpg)

Oh oh oh, and I made an avatar for windurst from it.

(http://www.f13.net/schild/windurst_avatar.jpg)

Is that Biosphere 2, or the mothership coming to take us all away?

I donno, it reminds me of that old boardgame mousetrap.  (by itself, the f13 punk kid kinda ruins the illusion)

It's a playground climbing cage, damnit.  Art is wasted on some people.

Shavnir and Pineapple,

I'm sorry you couldn't understand the joke. You see, in two (maybe 3) threads now, Windurst has complained about Haemish's profanity. It was like a kid on the playground getting angry at all the cool kids smoking behind the schoolbuilding. I'm sorry I can't create Goya in 120 seconds. Next time I'll take 240.

Yours in Christ,
-schild

So, f13 is the angsty goth teen that hates everyone, especially himself?  It looks like Windhurst is happily playing some sort of game over there, but f13 hates him and his blissful innocence.

Typing that kinda explained the "art" to myself.

You people are horrible.

Nuclear holocaust could wipe out all of humanity and you STILL wouldn't be the cool kid.

The jerk store called, they're running out of you.

This is an example of blatant trolling.

Another post similar to this will result in a suspension.

Yours in Christ,

The f13.net Staff

KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

EDIT: the yours in christ bit is a nice touch though. I approve.

UO r0xx0rz!  Everything else is teh sux!!1!

[ricflair]Wooo![/ricflair]

Now that this thread has gone totally into the toilet, I just figured I'd just drop by and join in the shitting.

That was an example of being an asshole. Seriously, the troll word gets thrown around too much. I don't even think people know what it means anymore and just ascribe it to any internet behavior they don't like.

Ok, I'll go with that. This is an example of blatant assholery.

Fine. It was a blatantly asshole post. And so was that one. Keep it up, please.

Yours in Christ,

The f13.net Staff

Does this mean that Boog will soon be gone again?  

This place is a bit more stale without some of these formerly banned personalities to contribute to the forums.  Maybe the f13.net staff could be a little less heavy handed in dishing out punishment?  Some moderation is needed or the boards would quickly degenerate, but too much moderation can result in an equal state.

I guess you could just bring back the "approved posters" group  (I think that's what it was called), but is that really a good thing?

Two people in total are banned. I've no clue what you're talking about. Also, I don't believe Boog getting banned would be a very *new* thing.

It's a timeless classic actually.

Well, I was under the impression that several people that had been banned were allowed back.  I thought I got that info from the "Word about our little niche" thread from a few weeks ago.   That's when I noticed Boog back, and some other people I had not seen in a while started popping up in threads.

Seemed to me like it was:  "You can come back, but... EGGSHELLS!  Walk like you are on eggshells buddy."

I just was enjoying some of the new posts.  Maybe I need to find something else to do when I am bored at work.  First stop for me was usually f13.

They never banned me here. And as a recap, I've been banned all of twice. Once way way way way back when Soulflame banned me as I was approaching 1000 posts [which meant a lot more back then] and another time when I deleted a moderators news thread at waterthread for being amazingly stupid.

I just give off the impression of being banned a lot more.

And we love you for it. It is, however, tough love.

Yours in Christ,

The f13.net Staff

The only people who were unbanned that have really posted at all were HRose and uhm, HRose. Oh, and then Pyro made an account and griefed Winger upon us. So he's banned again.



To who? Bruce? Bruce was a seperate issue. And I want everyone to walk on eggshells around him anyway.



There just haven't been that many new posts from old people. You're imagining things.

I was banned from Stratics for posting tubgirl under the title "New monster screenshot!"  I also provoked Myschyf into one of her millions of pointless bannings back on LtM.  Really, I consider them both marks of honor.

You just considered being a faceless goon a mark of honor. I suppose that works, at that stage of the game pretty much everything is a step up.

I'll make an attempt to wrest this thread back to the original topic.  Likely in vain, but what the heck.



An interesting article, but I'm not so concerned with EA laying off, as I am with people in aquired businesses leaving of their own voilition, since part of what you buy from a studio is the talent in that studio.  In fact, layoffs at EA could be a good thing, if they are removing non-performing staff.  On the other hand, if they are losing quality staff that has become disgruntled by EA's legendary production practices, that would be a loss of business capital for EA.  That is hard to tell from the outside.  Heck, it's hard to tell that sort of thing from the inside, sometimes.



Guys, get a room, please.  Especially if you are going to get kinky.  Some folks here are sensitive.

Hey Boog, if you dislike us that much, just leave. I'm sure there's a nice family somewhere who's willing to take care of you.

I'm pretty sure EA does not consider the talented (or untalented) staff at acquisitions to be of any worth. It's not the people who make the games, it's the BRANDS (like Ultima, Command & Conquer, and Battlefield) that are where the real value lies, not in some overpaid programmer who they can replace with some wet-behind-the-ears kid fresh out of college.

In short, based on the way EA treats its employees and acquisitions, they don't give two shits about the staff of their acquisitions or their own staff. Their perspective is all about the investment dollars and profits on the balance sheet. Whether or not the games made are flaming turd balls or gaming nirvana means nothing.