:uhrr:, the article: what are the stupidest things that happened in gaming?

[Samprimary]

 

I'm thinking of writing an article. I got the idea while browsing through the MWO thread and reminiscing about better days! I want it to be an article that's kind of buzzfeedy. A list of really dumbfounding moments brought to us recently (or not so recently) by the gaming industry.

Of which there are many, and I can only imagine I really understand a few. My first contribution would be PGI's announcement, explanation, and implementation of Ghost Heat. Hoax linked a PGI forums post that said "I would like to remind people of all the reasons Ghost Heat is the single worst game design element ever committed to a game" and I think it only really scratched the surface of how dumb Ghost Heat is.

But first I gotta ask you guys - in loving detail, what's some of the most mindblowingly stupid, terrible, or otherwise bizarre things that have happened in gaming and game development that you still like to kvetch about? Together we should be able to get a pretty good top ten, at least.

[schild]

Would need to be a separate top ten just to cover the history of EA's fuckups.

Probably an article worth writing.

[Malakili]

The utter mismanagement of Flagship Studios, the trainwreck that was Hellgate: London, and the fact that it was followed by the stunning success that was Runic's (formerly Flagship North's) Torchlight that it managed to put together in 10 months on a shoestring budget.  It really crystallized just how utterly unforgivable Bill Roper's management was.

[schild]

There's an important thing that needs to be either separated or incorporated into this idea. Can making tons of money still be considered a long-term failure? See, the Wii or what Blizzard has become, etc.

[Soulflame]

I'd like to nominate the Warhammer MMO.  A PvP MMO developed by a house who built DAoC.  I figured there'd have to be at least some carry over of knowledge on how to build and balance a PvP MMO, but that was apparently very very wrong.

Duke Nukem?  Aliens: Colonial Marines?  These are probably too easy in terms of targets, plus done to death.

Nintendo and Blizzard may have set themselves on long term trajectories that result in failure.  Who knows?

[schild]

Who knows?

The shadow knows.

But really, the question should be: Will Nintendo be making homes consoles in a decade? To which the answer is, naw, probably not. But Mario will keep them afloat forever, let along their other properties.

As for Blizzard, eventually they will break free of Activision somehow maybe. Or everyone will just leave. If Activision can fuck up Infinity Ward, they can fuck up Blizzard.

[Samprimary]

the Infinity Ward one is pretty good, but I'm light on all the intimate details of it.

Sim City 2013 is a stunningly epic paean to all sorts of dysfunction that I'm going to struggle to mill down to an appropriate length. It was breathtakingly awesome to watch, in realtime, the process in which people slowly discovered that the absolutely broken launch had just served to temporarily conceal that the game underneath was absolute, painful shit. It's hilarious to go read most reviews for the game permanently crystallized at the point of "underneath the mess of its launch lies a beautiful jewel ready to emerge! 8.3/10"

[Malakili]

Diablo 3 could maybe be on the list for "stupidest things" just because Diablo 2 was SO GOOD.  D3 isn't a total trainwreck (some here disagree), but given that it should have been so much better it could probably be fit into an   article.  Or maybe just the D3 auction house deserves a place on the list.  Again, not my least favorite thing in the world, but seems to have really cocked things up.


Also: Spore?

[Chimpy]

You need to make sure to illustrate the most salient points with a comic.

[schild]

Diablo 3 doesn't even tick the radar of biggest cockups in gaming.

[Malakili]

Diablo 3 doesn't even tick the radar of biggest cockups in gaming.

Well is this a list of biggest cockups or stupidest things?  

Either way, doesn't matter. We can just keep putting ideas out, and figure out it out later.  And be we I mean SamPrimary can figure it out later.

As a solution to the EA problem, I suggest you make a single entry for EA, covering everything it has done over the last decade, and then leave the other 9 slots open for non-EA games.

[schild]

1. Bioware
2. TOR (this is separate from Bioware, IMO)
3. Origin
4. Mythic
5. Will Wright / Spore
6. OSI
7. Simcity
8. Bullfrog
9. Westwood
10. Basically whatever they do next.

In no particular order. That would make for a 50 page article.

[Samprimary]

D3's faecplant was I think mostly about how they completely failed to anticipate the impact that the auction house would have on the appeal formula of the game (they turned loot hunting and drops from the primary appeal to the primary frustration in one fell antigenius swoop) and how they should have considered the last difficulty level of the game to have been the one that needed the most balance attention as opposed to something they just tacked on almost experimentally, because it was what people were going to smash their faces against, pathologically, until they quit in rage.

I suppose it was also a story of how if your game is one that is progressed through via many multiple replays, your story should take the effort to not be completely terrible.

This largely seems to have to do with how blizzard is uniquely incompetent at storytelling these days. Some combination of really bad storytellers in inviolable positions alongside some weird policy that I hypothesize makes them use focus groups to dullard their stories to death.

Spore! Yes, that one's a good one. The epic transition from uncle wright's inspiring demo to a completely dumbed down product.

[luckton]

That would make for a 50 page article.

tl;dr - EA sucks.  Stop giving them monies.

[Samprimary]

Well is this a list of biggest cockups or stupidest things?  

This one is probably just a list of uniquely surreal things to experience as a gamer, usually pertaining to stunningly bad individual decisions or the consequential experience gamers had as a result of really terrible design or management of a game. It's really end-user based. There's some crossover with the epic wide-ranging incompetence of large groups, but individually surreal decisions and results make for better fodder.

There could also be a The Biggest Cock-Ups list alongside The Most Uhrr Moments

[schild]

On some hard drive somewhere, I have the full audio recording of Brad McQuaid being Brad McQuaid. It's a stunning failure of being a human being.

I honestly don't believe there's any cockup in gaming quite like Sigil Games. I mean, there have been some massive top-down failures, but that thing was America's Takeshi no Chōsenjō.

[Chimpy]

Ion Storm

[Samprimary]

ha! the daikatana debacle was certainly impressively surreal, especially counting the whole JERN REMERERO IS GOANER MAKE U HIS BEEETCH thing

[Chimpy]

It is also something that people over the last 10 years have failed to learn any lessons from. Which is good for the 

[Job601]

All these developer failures are definitely worth talking about, but for me one of the biggest disasters in gaming has been the way "the community" have become such an important part of game development.  There's so much groupthink in the internet gaming community, and combined with the domination of the conversation by a vocal minority, it's a disaster.  Way too many games now try to give players what they say they want instead of what they really need, and sometimes they get rich doing it (see the Chris Roberts thread.)

[Venkman]

XP loss on death
Level loss from XP loss
Item loss from unrecoverable corpses
SWG NGE
Day one XP nerf in Planetside
That there was a monthly fee on it equivalent to EQ1
CoH XP curve
Walking avatars in Auto Assault

[Velorath]

Not recent, but the U.S. launch of the Sega Saturn was a pretty massive fuckup.

[schild]

Not recent, but the U.S. launch of the Sega Saturn was a pretty massive fuckup.

More good games than the Wii U.

[schild]

XP loss on death
Level loss from XP loss
Item loss from unrecoverable corpses
SWG NGE
Day one XP nerf in Planetside
That there was a monthly fee on it equivalent to EQ1
CoH XP curve
Walking avatars in Auto Assault

I'm not sure individual or even clusters of design choices should be included when so many manchildren walk the face of the industry.

[Velorath]

Not recent, but the U.S. launch of the Sega Saturn was a pretty massive fuckup.

More good games than the Wii U.

Wasn't a matter of games, it was the surprise announcement during E3 that they were actually going to release it that day instead of months later in September like they had originally announced. Not only did they screw over every retailer other than the four that got to carry the Saturn at launch, but they also screwed over all the 3rd party developers who had been expecting a September launch (which is why the 6 titles that were available at launch were all made by Sega). That's a lot of bridges to burn all at once.

[Kail]

Curt Schilling's event is probably the one that sticks out most to me in recent memory.

The Ouya, maybe?  The XBone's original unveiling?

For PC releases, the big flops recently that I've been aware of have been the War Z / Infestation: Survivor Stories launch, and the Orion: Dino Horde/Dino Beatdown thing (you always know you're dealing with a quality product when the dev changes the name to get away from the metacritic rating).

[schild]

I was gonna list Curt Schilling, but comeon. He's a fucking baseball player. They aren't exactly known for business acumen or getting relevant degrees or even getting degrees.

He tried to brute force success because he could throw a ball.

[schild]

Not recent, but the U.S. launch of the Sega Saturn was a pretty massive fuckup.

More good games than the Wii U.

Wasn't a matter of games, it was the surprise announcement during E3 that they were actually going to release it that day instead of months later in September like they had originally announced. Not only did they screw over every retailer other than the four that got to carry the Saturn at launch, but they also screwed over all the 3rd party developers who had been expecting a September launch (which is why the 6 titles that were available at launch were all made by Sega). That's a lot of bridges to burn all at once.

I know, I was merely commenting on the Wii U.

[Ingmar]

XP loss on death
Level loss from XP loss
Item loss from unrecoverable corpses
SWG NGE
Day one XP nerf in Planetside
That there was a monthly fee on it equivalent to EQ1
CoH XP curve
Walking avatars in Auto Assault

I'm not sure individual or even clusters of design choices should be included when so many manchildren walk the face of the industry.

Plus we already have a thread for it I think.

[schild]

Ah yes, the ill-fated Wiki thread.

tags: Nix, GetWhatYouPayFor

[Soulflame]

What about the Phantom?

Or the glasses douchebag who worked at mythic.

Wish?

A company is at steak!!!1  I think that was Glitchless, with their amazing negative ping code.

Horizons?

Christ, I don't think top 100 will even scratch the surface.

ET on the Atari?

[Venkman]

XP loss on death
Level loss from XP loss
Item loss from unrecoverable corpses
SWG NGE
Day one XP nerf in Planetside
That there was a monthly fee on it equivalent to EQ1
CoH XP curve
Walking avatars in Auto Assault

I'm not sure individual or even clusters of design choices should be included when so many manchildren walk the face of the industry.

Plus we already have a thread for it I think.

Oh, I misread "game development" as game design decisions, not the events. Shoulda read the rest of the thread 

You guys already mentioned all the ones that come to mind. Only one I can think of now is AC2: both launching without an ingame currency (design decision) and being will to go live and for a year without a functioning chat system (development shackles to Microsoft's back end iirc).

[schild]

What about the Phantom?

Or the glasses douchebag who worked at mythic.

Wish?

A company is at steak!!!1  I think that was Glitchless, with their amazing negative ping code.

Horizons?

Christ, I don't think top 100 will even scratch the surface.

ET on the Atari?

I bet I could get David Allen to finally talk about Horizons. Chances are Mahrin Skel would talk about Wish at this point also.

[Mithas]

Paul Barnett's Youtube videos.

Edit: More seriously, the latest SimCity really stands out to me. The launch was beyond bad. The EA executive (I forget who) saying that it wouldn't be possible to have a single player game, followed up with some developer saying it was possible. Oh and the Nissan Leaf DLC.

[Fabricated]

King Dorito of Mt. Dew
The XBox kinect/always on/no used games fiasco
Dickwolves
Bioware (Dragon Age 2, Hepler, ME3)
SWTOR
Final Fantasy XIV
Kickstarter flops (Takedown, Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded- especially now that Al Lowe bailed from further games since the Replay Games CEO got busted sending lewd material to a minor, CLANG, Yogsventures, etc)
Origin in general being awful
Simcity