Godus - train wreck in progress

[HaemishM]

To be fair, the readers of gaming journalism aren't paying the journalists salaries. It's actually getting paid by the advertisers who also happen to be the beneficiaries of the journalist's coverage. So we probably shouldn't be surprised that the "journalists" don't bite the hand that feeds, because that hand sure as fuck doesn't belong to us.

Video gaming journalism is almost purely advertorial and always has been.

[Paelos]

To be fair, the readers of gaming journalism aren't paying the journalists salaries. It's actually getting paid by the advertisers who also happen to be the beneficiaries of the journalist's coverage. So we probably shouldn't be surprised that the "journalists" don't bite the hand that feeds, because that hand sure as fuck doesn't belong to us.

Video gaming journalism is almost purely advertorial and always has been.

Which isn't the case when actual news outlets cover it like Forbes, which is why I like that they can Call out developers for saying extremely stupid shit about their own games.

When you have a big backer that doesn't need handouts to survive, you can say what's true. As in the case of the Order, pointing out a game that's so short with absolutely no multiplayer for a $60 price tag.

[MahrinSkel]

I'll tell you what word has gotten under my skin until the mere mention of it in any article about games makes me want to throw my mouse across the room: "Entitled". No shit, the people who paid for Mass Effect 3 feel they were entitled to an ending that didn't leave them scratching their heads? I *get* what the ending was trying to do, and even liked it, but writing off people who didn't like it as "entitled", as if being unhappy with a product you paid for was some kind of crime against humanity, what the fuck?

People who don't like a product or service have a right to bitch about it. You can say they're making too much of a fuss over a game, or that they don't understand, or that they are not actually paying more than pennies (if anything at all) and therefore not worth serving. But if you're going to look at the people whose attention and dollars represent the entire justification for your career and dismiss *them* as acting "entitled" and therefore you don't have to pay any attention at all, you can fuck off.

People who backed Godus were taking a gamble, and it didn't pay off. That's too bad, and it's certainly not a Great Crime. But you're damned straight they are entitled to bitch about it, and make sure that every future project associated with the same creative team is dogged by reminders of how this one went.

--Dave

[Soln]

Agreed.  Games journalists are probably a pretty entitled lot. I sense it when they make references to their degrees or old games played or anything to bolster why their opinion matters.  It doesn't.  Their skill with social media, popularity or attention, is what has replaced expertise for their authority to be listened to. They know it and it's uncomfortable for some. 

[Samprimary]

Molyneux doesn't just promise features that don't quite work as well they should on release, or deliver them late, or have to scale them back a bit due to technical/budget constraints, or just take longer than usual for entire projects. The guy promises stuff that literally cannot be done within the scope of the technology or budget he has, as loudly and as often as possible.

I wonder how frequently he has made promises which, looking back, were beyond the capacity of any game publisher at the time and/or simply impossible given available technology

[Jeff Kelly]

I'd guess since he started out. Take a look at the PR campaign and preview cycle of Dungeon Keeper or Magic Carpet. You can see PM's mode of operation even this early. Or Powermonger which should have been everything Populous was not.

Dungeon Keeper was especially blatant. By the time he gave the first previews the game should have come out the following year, it came out three years later. He made a concerted PR effort with some gaming mags even publishing dev diaries. One mag I knew ran the dev diary for 18 months until both sides agreed to cancel it because the game was still a year from release and they didn't even know what to talk about anymore. Also Dungeon Keeper never turned out to be the game PM promised when he first talked to the press. He also since confessed that they integrated the battle against other dungeon Keepers RTS style because the game was only half finished and they realized that the 'build a dungeon' mechanic got boring half way through the game.

The main difference was that - while he was even then promising the moon and lying his ass off - what his company delibvered where decent if flawed game experiences. Dungeon Keeper is fun, Syndicate is fun, Magic Carpet is fun. They may be all flawed, they may be not what he promised they would be but they are at least finished products and decent games.

Black and White is not, Fable is not and everything he made after B&W is successively worse.

[Jeff Kelly]

There's a reason he 'left EA of his own accord' and then 'left MS of his own accord' and has to go to kickstarter to get funds and the reason is that he is already completely burned and no publisher wants to work with him because they all know that he is a habitual liar that can't deliver a finished product and throws his partners and publishers under the bus after.

[Jeff Kelly]

Video gaming journalism is almost purely advertorial and always has been.

I should have wrote 'pretend to be'. Fact is that this line of reasoning will get people in the business extremely mad at you. They all believe they are consumer advocates, so I will judge them by that measure.

[jakonovski]

Jim Sterling explains PM pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGo63oAEN20

[Jeff Kelly]

The final 30 seconds of that video are hilarious

[Ironwood]

The original Dungeon Keeper was supposed to be utterly awesome.  I was so looking forward to it.

Then it came out and it was utter pish.

[Typhon]

Magic Carpet was awesome.  Magic Carpet 2 was more so.  Loved those games.

I didn't know anything about Dungeon Keeper before it appeared and I picked it up.  It was fun/different.  Played for awhile, got bored, moved on - but I can say that "got bored" part about most all games I've played.

Not a fan of PM, and agree that he over promises to a pathalogical degree.  But Dungeon Keeper was "utter pish"?  Get a grip.

[Jeff Kelly]

When you expected the final game to be what he promised and hyped the game up to be for three years then yes it was "utter pish".

[Paelos]

The idea spawned some good games down the line though. People that could actually execute ideas learned something from Dungeon Keeper.

[Montague]

I'll tell you what word has gotten under my skin until the mere mention of it in any article about games makes me want to throw my mouse across the room: "Entitled". No shit, the people who paid for Mass Effect 3 feel they were entitled to an ending that didn't leave them scratching their heads? I *get* what the ending was trying to do, and even liked it, but writing off people who didn't like it as "entitled", as if being unhappy with a product you paid for was some kind of crime against humanity, what the fuck?

People who don't like a product or service have a right to bitch about it. You can say they're making too much of a fuss over a game, or that they don't understand, or that they are not actually paying more than pennies (if anything at all) and therefore not worth serving. But if you're going to look at the people whose attention and dollars represent the entire justification for your career and dismiss *them* as acting "entitled" and therefore you don't have to pay any attention at all, you can fuck off.

People who backed Godus were taking a gamble, and it didn't pay off. That's too bad, and it's certainly not a Great Crime. But you're damned straight they are entitled to bitch about it, and make sure that every future project associated with the same creative team is dogged by reminders of how this one went.

--Dave

It's not just the journalists that are saying that word - the developers are too. A certain one that F13 knows very well used that exact term while discussing this whole fiasco on Facebook.

[Maven]

Jim Sterling explains PM pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGo63oAEN20

If Jim Sterling found success with Jimquisition, and the history of his production was anything like that video, then god bless him. Not for me.

[Sky]

I think the whole 'entitled' thing is muddied by the whiny, loudmouthed 'entitlement generation'. If the slightest part of anyone's day goes slightly less perfect than their little internal compass dictates, it's time to bitch about it loud and wide. It gets fucking old, and some people with legit complaints will take the heat for it. The signal:noise ration is worse than any time in history and getting worse quickly.

While your legit complaints might not be entitled tantrum-throwing, the vast majority of complaints are.

And honestly, the complaints about the end of ME3 were pretty fucking stupid. It's a game. Do you go complain to Hollywood studios when you don't like the end of a movie? Why, when I was a kid we just said, "well, that ending sucked," and got on with life. Which is too short to waste on shit like complaining about how some stupid video game ended.

Anyway, the plot for Adventure on the Atari is a fucking mess, I can't figure out what's going on with the castles and this bat is written like a fourth grader on methballs. Anyway, Mahrin's career has been all downhill since that screencap app :p

[Trippy]

And honestly, the complaints about the end of ME3 were pretty fucking stupid. It's a game. Do you go complain to Hollywood studios when you don't like the end of a movie? Why, when I was a kid we just said, "well, that ending sucked," and got on with life. Which is too short to waste on shit like complaining about how some stupid video game ended.

That's true for some movies. On the other hand people will be talking about how the Star Wars prequels sucked till the end of time.

[KallDrexx]

When you expected the final game to be what he promised and hyped the game up to be for three years then yes it was "utter pish".

I feel like this is why F13 is great.

To everyone here, every game is terrible and thus my expectations are set so low that I end up enjoying my time with most games 

[Falconeer]

I feel like this is why F13 is great.

To everyone here, every game is terrible and thus my expectations are set so low that I end up enjoying my time with most games 

So true.

[Ironwood]

When you expected the final game to be what he promised and hyped the game up to be for three years then yes it was "utter pish".

Yes.

Oddly, it was the only lesson I needed about him, even all those many, many years ago.


Carpet and Powermonger and Syndicate and even Black and White  I actually liked because, you know, I didn't follow what they were GOING to be and instead played them for what they were.

But Dungeon Keeper broke my heart.

[Ironwood]

When you expected the final game to be what he promised and hyped the game up to be for three years then yes it was "utter pish".

I feel like this is why F13 is great.

To everyone here, every game is terrible and thus my expectations are set so low that I end up enjoying my time with most games 

That's not even remotely true.  So you're liking f13 for the wrong reasons.

Yes, I went there;  you're doing f13 wrong.

You muppet.

 

[HaemishM]

And honestly, the complaints about the end of ME3 were pretty fucking stupid. It's a game. Do you go complain to Hollywood studios when you don't like the end of a movie? Why, when I was a kid we just said, "well, that ending sucked," and got on with life.

Yes, only my complaints are usually in the form of Twitter posts, blog reviews and never spending money with that studio again. I haven't bought a Bioware game since ME3 because that ending SUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD it.

[Paelos]

That's not even remotely true.  So you're liking f13 for the wrong reasons.

Yes, I went there;  you're doing f13 wrong.

You muppet.

 

There's only one way to do f13. The wrong way.

[Trippy]

Any way but the schild-way is the wrong way.

[Kail]

While your legit complaints might not be entitled tantrum-throwing, the vast majority of complaints are.

And honestly, the complaints about the end of ME3 were pretty fucking stupid. It's a game. Do you go complain to Hollywood studios when you don't like the end of a movie? Why, when I was a kid we just said, "well, that ending sucked," and got on with life. Which is too short to waste on shit like complaining about how some stupid video game ended.

I don't disagree with that, but if you're going to discuss how fun Mass Effect was (for example), to discount certain people's opinions as "entitled" kind of negates the point of the conversation.  It's a big huggy circlejerk until some entitled trolls come in and say things they DIDN'T like, how mean.  One of the worst things about the internet is it's tendency to echo-box people in to extreme positions, but someone who thinks the ending to a video game sucked should be able to say why without people implying that HE'S the crazy one for wanting something he'd like.  Maybe we're coming at it from different angles, I didn't see the maelstrom that probably erupted on the bigger boards about the topic, but if you're making a product, finding out why people don't like it is at least as important as finding out why other people did like it.

I mean, if we're talking about threatening violence on people or doxxing them or whatever, that's one thing, and way outside the "helpful debate" zone.  But if we're in a conversation about Mass Effect then some people are going to dislike Mass Effect and calling them "entitled" for feeling that the ending sucked goes from a possibly valid discussion ("I hated the ending because XYX") to a completely invalid one (ad hominem "your opinion is irrelevant because you're entitled").

[Samwise]

At one extreme you have people who start petitions on change.org because they didn't like a video game ending.  

At the other you have people who react to any negative opinion of anything as if you'd dug up their great-grandmother and raped her corpse.

I guess those are actually the same extreme of "people who take trivial shit way too goddamn seriously."

[koro]

Molyneux doesn't just promise features that don't quite work as well they should on release, or deliver them late, or have to scale them back a bit due to technical/budget constraints, or just take longer than usual for entire projects. The guy promises stuff that literally cannot be done within the scope of the technology or budget he has, as loudly and as often as possible.

I wonder how frequently he has made promises which, looking back, were beyond the capacity of any game publisher at the time and/or simply impossible given available technology

As far as I'm aware, some of the features he touted for the first Fable game still aren't feasible even today, or only in very limited form.

[Kail]

Is there, like, a compiled list or something of claims he's made about his games?  That sounds like it would be some interesting reading, but I'm having trouble finding anything concise amid the ocean of PR material for all this stuff.  I never caught much of the pre-release hype for anything before Fable or B&W so I'm kind of adrift when it comes to stuff he claimed about Populus or Syndicate or whatever.

[Khaldun]

If you were going to pie chart them, most of them would be claims about AI and about some version or variation on procedural content.

[Sir T]

a bit of google-fu later on PM claims.

http://kotaku.com/the-man-who-promised-too-much-1537352493

http://www.nowgamer.com/the-five-greatest-peter-molyneux-quotes/

This poll has lots of claims of PM dishonesty and idiotness http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.136679-Poll-Peter-Molyneux-Idiot-or-Liar?

[Ironwood]

I just wanted a living breathing dungeon that I could build full of lovely monsters that I could grow and towns around I could terrorise with heroes that I could entrap.

THAT WAS ALL I WANTED.

Of course, to chime in on the actual discussion ;  none of this is possible with current tech either.  I was played.

[apocrypha]

none of this is possible with current tech either.

Just out of interest, why not? What's missing from current game tech? Is it AI? Background processing?

[Ironwood]

Will.

[Hutch]

none of this is possible with current tech either.

Just out of interest, why not? What's missing from current game tech? Is it AI? Background processing?

I'm sorry, Dave.