Titan Network
Community => Other Games => Topic started by: TimtheEnchanter on May 07, 2013, 09:20:24 PM
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http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/06/ea-acquires-star-wars-game-license
And yeah, it's exclusive. Another non-competition agreement for EA. :roll:
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Interesting. I bet someone made a killing off that deal.
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KotOR III probably inbound then.
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Not surprising.
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Is that worse than what happened to Paragon Studios and City of Heroes ? Nope, I don't think so.
For each bad they did, EA also did something else good. Also, I could handle new Star Wars games once in a while, instead of the dead see we have now. I miss the time we had more than one game per year coming out, even if it was tangently good games like Force Commander. It was alive.
I hope they will also allow smaller games, not every game needs be as big as Assassin's Creed or TOR, or The Force Unleashed. Small like Rebellion, Galactic Battleground, Racer...
Ah, poodoo, wanna play them now. Ee chu ta !
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This move has drawn my ire.
Unless they release an anniversary edition of the X-Wing and TIE Fighter sims.
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For each bad they did, EA also did something else good.
not so much, no.
EA is... well I won't say they make horrible games, cuz they don't. I've loved the battlefield series since the first one, and to hell with any CoD players who wanna argue ;D There are some great development teams under EA's thumb, or in their pocket, depending on how you want to look at it.
But EA as a company is really amazingly rotten, in that over the top, animated movie villain kind of way. Back when they were having their skirmish with Steam, I decided to really look into the issue and figure out what was what... I read every press announcement from EA over a 15 month period... and it was eye opening. The press announcements were so full of self-contradictions that it was hard to take any single sentence seriously. It was lie after lie after lie... and the confusing part was that some of the lies were not in any way helpful to EA, they were just... like when asked a question, lying was the go-to reflex, even when the truth would have been well received. It reminded me of someone I knew many years ago who was a compulsive liar, not for personal gain or deception, but because they couldn't seem to help themselves.
That's just the press release statements though. If we get into their business practices, customer support interactions, private information trafficking, buying out & closing competition in the market, spyware allegations, etc. Well, It would make for a really long post. I'll just say that they have been training and working hard for years to win the Golden Poop award (for being voted worst company of the year) twice in a row.
on the other hand, i view lucas as selling out the SW universe himself first anyway, and Disney is no angel. I've just been kinda out of SW stuff since Ep 1 premiered.
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I'll just say that they have been training and working hard for years to win the Golden Poop award (for being voted worst company of the year) twice in a row.
Which is hysterical and showcases the utter self absorbed lifestyle of today's culture. EA gets voted worst company two years in a row for having moronic corporate practices. Meanwhile, Foxconn - global supplier of every Apple brand on the market, along with the Kindle, PS3, and Wii U consoles - has to put safety nets around their buildings and factories to catch the workers who routinely jump off the top of the building in an attempt to kill themselves.
In the battle between invasive DRM and On Disk Day One DLC vs Poor Working Conditions and Suicides...yeah. That's not even in the same ballpark, is it?
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In the battle between invasive DRM and On Disk Day One DLC vs Poor Working Conditions and Suicides...yeah. That's not even in the same ballpark, is it?
AKA First World Problems
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EA is... well I won't say they make horrible games, cuz they don't.
I wouldn't say that EA make games at all. They publish games, but that's a different animal to making them. (and may actively inhibit *making* good and interesting games)
http://kotaku.com/we-need-better-video-game-publishers-472880781
^ That is one take on publishers and their impact on making games, but a likely biased one. However, it's an interesting read, IMO.
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Which is hysterical and showcases the utter self absorbed lifestyle of today's culture. EA gets voted worst company two years in a row for having moronic corporate practices. Meanwhile, Foxconn - global supplier of every Apple brand on the market, along with the Kindle, PS3, and Wii U consoles - has to put safety nets around their buildings and factories to catch the workers who routinely jump off the top of the building in an attempt to kill themselves.
I don't think that as much. It's a matter of what gets more press, what's fresh on everyone's mind, and just who cares enough to vote in displays of public displeasure with corporations.
To be frank, this is the first time I've ever heard of Foxconn, let alone their business practices. Even if Foxconn owned the headlines for its bullcrap, it still wouldn't have taken the Golden Poo from EA. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, and the Consumerist's "competition" is between American companies. And the fact that the Worst Company in America awards this year took place right as EA was busy torpedoing its release of the latest Sim City, coupled with Orewllian PR tactics and horror stories involving their customer support, well ... you can see why EA won the award again so easily.
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I don't think that as much. It's a matter of what gets more press, what's fresh on everyone's mind, and just who cares enough to vote in displays of public displeasure with corporations.
To be frank, this is the first time I've ever heard of Foxconn, let alone their business practices. Even if Foxconn owned the headlines for its bullcrap, it still wouldn't have taken the Golden Poo from EA. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, and the Consumerist's "competition" is between American companies. And the fact that the Worst Company in America awards this year took place right as EA was busy torpedoing its release of the latest Sim City, coupled with Orewllian PR tactics and horror stories involving their customer support, well ... you can see why EA won the award again so easily.
Do you think EA plans that? I mean it seems they always have something going on that is, what is the word? "Strange", right before that competition. And they won three times.
And what is slightly unnerving and when thought too deep and with a Rockstar drink infused mind that probably slightly off kilter anyways, is that corporations can be terrible, people know they are terrible, and yet still get rewarded with the votes of wallets. Meaning do it really matter what the consumer thinks as long as they spend money and buy? Or maybe the comptition is small portion of people, most that dont deal with EA anyways and thus not mattering anyways in EA eyes. Or maybe America population is used to the ego infused opinion aware status of celebrities/politician that will say something and then issue a pre-packaged apology just to save face while corporations grew thick skin very thick skin with money being their source of power and incentive. Or are they using this as publicity. Hoping that people who may not know much about EA start searching for more info and come across their site see some cool games and buy a few while they are there. Just random thoughts inside a rockstar drink infused off kilter mind. :P
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Nah, I don't think EA screws over their own games just to get that award. With the amount of controversies and issues gamers have with EA (remember when EA slapped draconic DRM on Spore and pretty much torpedoed THAT game's launch in so doing, too?), I think the timing was just a coincidence.
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Nah, I don't think EA screws over their own games just to get that award. With the amount of controversies and issues gamers have with EA (remember when EA slapped draconic DRM on Spore and pretty much torpedoed THAT game's launch in so doing, too?), I think the timing was just a coincidence.
No they just blindly walk into that spinning prop time and time again because they are too busy making sure product is shipped in the quarter that was designated to notice the hazard.
Software development is not a construction project yet often it's viewed that way by senior management. We are building a bridge. We have built a lot of bridges. Building another one should be very predictable, we need a schedule on our desk by Monday. And if you were writing yet another word processor that approach likely works more often than not but these are games, entertainment, there's an ephemeral element of fun that needs to be taken into account. A large portion of games are art assets nowadays. You need 3D modelers, texture painters, animators, story writers, dialog writers, maybe voice talent and director, etc. It's difficult to schedule "art". Especially if you want it to be any good. It's difficult to design "fun". Sure you can take a popular indy game and Xerox all it's elements, wrap it in different graphics and hope they don't have the money to sue the pants off of you (Hi Zynga!).
Also upper management rarely care about fun. They are interested in the BIG picture. What's important is cash flow, sales, costs. To maximize income they will insist on adding DRM, even though it's a minor speed bump for pirates. To minimize costs they will short change testing, staffing, use "crunch time" to get the product out the door according to their unrealistic schedule because they need new product, it's sales income actually, for that quarter to meet their numbers.
Problem is most projects do not schedule in enough slack to handle unexpected turns in development. Then can't because they can rarely get those schedules approved. That's the main reason for "crunch time", no schedule slack.
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Whenever I find out that a studio is a victim of crunchtime, I become leery of them. I don't think many people stop to think about it, but I know better, and it has caused me to not buy or subscribe to games. If you see a studio consistently missing planned deadlines but putting out consistently awesome stuff, that's reliable quality right there. I'll take that over reliable quantity any day.
You see more and more MMO players begging for this these days. Saying things on forums like, "Take your time" ... "Get it right..."
A lot of us know how disappointing the alternative can be.
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You see more and more MMO players begging for this these days. Saying things on forums like, "Take your time" ... "Get it right..."
A lot of us know how disappointing the alternative can be.
To be honest, those of us on here are pretty much all long time die hard fans of CoH, the way things were done in CoH and the way CoH was developed.
We're a minority.
But by god it makes it hard to realise that how CoH was done isn't how things are done at other studios.
For example, I'm playing Planetside 2 at the minute, and their development schedule makes me wince.
It's FAST, and the quality control suffers IMO as a result. The game never really gets a chance to settle down and bed in before the next major patch comes around.
They also commit what to me is a cardinal sin. Major patches on a Thursday/Friday are not uncommon IME. This often leads to the game, or sub components of the game, being borked over the weekend, and from looking on Twitter, it leads to the dev team working overtime on the weekend tracking down bugs to fix them. That's not something that should have to happen., as far as I'm concerned. Programmers are entitled to a life outside work, just like everybody else.
PS2 only got a public test server about a month ago, and the iteration I used to see on the CoH Training Room isn't there. Reasoned player feedback isn't worked on over a reasonable testing period that I can see, instead screaming and whining for nerfs abounds on the boards.
<sigh> I'm depressing myself now.
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Whenever I find out that a studio is a victim of crunchtime, I become leery of them. I don't think many people stop to think about it, but I know better, and it has caused me to not buy or subscribe to games. If you see a studio consistently missing planned deadlines but putting out consistently awesome stuff, that's reliable quality right there. I'll take that over reliable quantity any day.
You see more and more MMO players begging for this these days. Saying things on forums like, "Take your time" ... "Get it right..."
A lot of us know how disappointing the alternative can be.
I may have misread your point here. As I understood, wasn't LucasArts not only missing deadlines but they were also putting out inferior stuff? That the worst of both worlds for a studio, and if it was the case I can't blame Disney for just sending their IPs elsewhere.
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All I can say is - so much for Star Wars games. The last one I bought was Knights of the Old Republic. And that looks like it's going to remain the last.
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All I can say is - so much for Star Wars games. The last one I bought was Knights of the Old Republic. And that looks like it's going to remain the last.
Never say never.
Or so they say.
At least games are going to get developped, and put out.
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At least games are going to get developped, and put out.
That's like claiming at least JJ Abrahms is making Star Trek films.
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That's like claiming at least JJ Abrahms is making Star Trek films.
i'm sorry, but the last official star wars games are star wars angry birds and star wars pinball. (if you discount rise of the Hutt cartel for TOR). We also missed (because they were canceled) 1313 and a battlefront, IIRC. And a KOTOR 3 (which became TOR, good but expansive consolation)
So yeah, I wish to have more Star Wars games for the PC.
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1313 was my last hope for a Star Wars game that actually felt like Star Wars.