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Gothic 3 Release Date Uncertain
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RPGDot Forums > News Comments

Author Thread
TheMadGamer
High Emperor
High Emperor




Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California
   

quote:
Originally posted by Dajjer
Whinning went to a whole new level with Dungeon Lords. From a sociological perseptive it was kind of interesting. The hate that flowed on boards eveywhere was astounding. Did Dungeon Lords start WW2. Was Dungeon Lords the one that lured Adam to eat the apple. Are the Dungeon Lord folks really mimes that program for fun? One poster even called me a bot because I said the game was okay and fun for me to play.


Now that is some funny stuff. And damn you for making me shoot coffee out my nose.
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The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar
Post Tue Dec 20, 2005 3:03 pm
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Dajjer
Eager Tradesman
Eager Tradesman




Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 49
Location: Los Angeles area
   

quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
I'm glad you liked Dungeon Lords but from my perspective, it deserved every bit of whining possible and then some.


It did rightfully deserved some criticism, but from my perspective it went way over the line. And it's still over the line. Case in point, Why are some folks demanding they stop doing patches? The mind set behind making such statements scares me.

Anyway, I too am an old time gamer. Not only did the five inch floppys regularly go bad but do you remember this process? You get the new game floppy and then make 2 copies one as a back up and one to play. And don't even get me going on how long it would take to install games back then.

But back to point. I'm sorta glad G3 is coming out late 2006. With Oblivion and other RPGs coming out soon, they will be out of the way so that I can enjoy G3 all the more.
Post Tue Dec 20, 2005 4:16 pm
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
High Emperor




Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California
   

quote:
Originally posted by Dajjer
Anyway, I too am an old time gamer. Not only did the five inch floppys regularly go bad but do you remember this process? You get the new game floppy and then make 2 copies one as a back up and one to play. And don't even get me going on how long it would take to install games back then.


Ultima II:
You had a 'game disc' and 'data' disks. Back then, I didn't even have a hard drive so the entire game ran via the disks. I remember it took me maybe an entire year to complete Ultima II because of all the time I had to wait mailing bad discs to Sierra to get a replacement one... which would work for a while then die...

Wizardry 1:
Similar to U2, you left a floppy in the drive as you played and it was constantly written to. Every 5 to 10 hours or so, disc would go bad. Get mailer. Go to post office. Mail bad disc. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Get new disc. Rinse, repeat. Ah those were the days...
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Post Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:42 pm
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Shimbatha
Village Leader
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Joined: 15 Feb 2002
Posts: 78
Location: Jersey Shore
   

Dhruin, you make a good point...but I think Gothic (And perhaps Arx Fatalis 2 and Divine Divnity 2) shouldn't even be used against me in the argument because it is seen as the "Golden child" of hardcore Rpg fans. It is viewed by us the same way that Ultima was in the 80's and early 90's. It is the "Do no wrong" game series...at least for the time being.

But I still stand by what I said. Release one chapter that is somewhat lackluster, and the bandwagon is going to become much lighter. Remember Ultima 8, anyone?

Speaking of disk swapping...I fondly remember playing Pool of Radiance on my C64 and having to switch around 4 double sided disks for that game. Not to mention I had an entire box full of saved party members. I suppose that's why I never whined about load times either...since I grew up with 5 minute load times and considered anything less to be a godsend.
Post Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:52 am
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Stranger In A Strange Land




Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia
   

quote:
Originally posted by TheMadGamer
When people anticipating a game are 'let down' because a game they want to play is delayed and react mildly such as, 'dang I was really looking to playing that game' I don't really see that as whining. The whining, at least to me, is the outright hostile reaction to the developer, as if the developer just shot and killed the gamers dog.

When a game is delayed, the first people to wrestle with that reality are the developers... it's the devs who have the most at risk when it comes to the success or failure of their game. The last thing I imagine any developer wants to do is delay their game. Of course, decent developers will do just that if their game isn't finished at the time they originally planned to release it.
...
On the Oblivion forums, there are several threads every week that are outright hostile & nasty toward Bethesda for not releasing Oblivion when XBOX 360 went on sale. Just makes me cringe in my chair


Look, I agree some people go over the top and behave plain badly. And you are 100% right that game producers are the ones risking both their financial and professional positions.

The anonymity of the internet means someone is always going to be a jerk and the world would be a better place without such overreactions but my attitude is tempered by the active role most game producers play in generating the hype that fuels these responses in the first place.

You raised Oblivion and the reactions about the delay. I take your point entirely - but here's my perspective.

I wrote an article back in December 2004 that summarised the upcoming titles for 2005. At the time, Oblivion didn't have an official release date at all but I included it for obvious reasons - although the article conclusion pointed out that complex developments tend to run late more often than not, so perhaps 2006 would be the more obvious date.

Months later (and after it was obvious Bethesda was clearly aiming to be a launch title) some idiot posted an except of the article on the Bethsoft boards. One Bethsoft dev responded with this:

quote:
Meh, let them think what they want to think. Our dev cycles have always been between 18 months and 3 years. That's standard across the industry for major/multi-platform/international/AAA titles.

LET THE NAY SAYERS NAY ALL THEY WANT. That's actually GOOD publicity for us for when we hit our ship date on time. I'll make sure to ship a freshly cooked plate of crow for them to eat

In fact, all TES forum junkies should email them after we ship on time and ask "So, how's that yummy crow you've been eating?"


Now, that developer apologised almost immediately - it was just a rash reaction, so I don't raise it to throw dirt at Bethesda. Nevertheless, someone who is a fan of the Elder Scrolls, posts in the forums regularly, plans a PC upgrade to play...feels they have an emotional investment in the game. When they hear the dev say "they'll eat crow" and Pete Hines at Xbox after Xbox event hinting at a launch release - they believe it.

When it doesn't happen - they feel lied to. Do I believe Bethesda intentionally lied? No. But when they built hype to a fever-pitch for the release, then the publisher announces a delay in their financial outlook but the forum admins decry it as "unofficial", then days latter an official statement comes out -- they have to accept the flip-side of the hype they built.
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Post Wed Dec 21, 2005 6:25 am
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Mostly Harmless




Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany
   

Oblivion and G3 show how difficult it is to coordinate release date and the handling of their publication.

JoWooD and Koch Media reside in the same building in Rottenmann, Austria - and they still don´t get the communication done without mistakes.
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Post Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:55 am
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
High Emperor




Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California
   

quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
The anonymity of the internet means someone is always going to be a jerk and the world would be a better place without such overreactions…


Anonymous jerks on internet message boards? Where?!?

quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
…but my attitude is tempered by the active role most game producers play in generating the hype that fuels these responses in the first place.


My take is that fans hype the game more than the developers do. I’ve seen it so many times. Threads start with, ‘hey wouldn’t this idea be great’ and the next thing you know people are irate when that feature doesn’t show up in the game or a developer states that it won’t be in the game.

Sure developers hype their game. From the developer side, the main reason forums exist is to keep that developer and their games (and games in development) in the consciousness of their fans.

But I actually see more tempering by developers in the forums than ‘egging on.’ With the exception of Peter Molyneux, of course.

quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
…someone who is a fan of the Elder Scrolls, posts in the forums regularly, plans a PC upgrade to play...feels they have an emotional investment in the game. When they hear the dev say "they'll eat crow" and Pete Hines at Xbox after Xbox event hinting at a launch release - they believe it.


People will make costly investments with their hardware regardless of the hype so I don’t think you can blame an external entity.

I upgraded my PC every time a new Ultima was scheduled to be released from Ultima IV to Ultima VIII. I remember buying a 16MHz CPU add-in card and an EGA video card for my 4MHz 8088 IBM machine just to run King’s Quest IV. These were huge expenses for me at the time.

Back then, there were no developer message boards (at least none I had access to although I realize BBS’s did exist but I was never really into that) and just about zero hype. In fact, information about anything related to a game’s development was rare and limited mostly to print-mags. But I was in tune with these games because I enjoyed them so I meted out whatever information I could find about them and made actual purchasing decisions based mostly on the hype I built about these games in my own mind. And I believe that is where hype actually exists, in our own minds because if a person isn’t interested in a product, that person isn’t going to react much to the marketing of it.

I got my hands on a sparkling new Pentium 60MHz to play Ultima VIII, which came out several months after I got the PC, and was a game I was mostly disappointed with. But instead of blaming the developer and the world that I had spent a lot of money on a machine for a game that was hardly worth the expense, I learned that buying hardware (or anything for that matter) is always and forever going to be at the ‘buyers’ risk’ because that is the way life is and the sooner you get it the better off you’re going to be.

quote:
LET THE NAY SAYERS NAY ALL THEY WANT. That's actually GOOD publicity for us for when we hit our ship date on time. I'll make sure to ship a freshly cooked plate of crow for them to eat


How unprofessional. I can see stuff like this being said in private, closed door meetings by developers but is quite jaw dropping that someone at Bethesda was so unprofessional in this case. This was a mistake and I can see how it fueled bad vibes by some fans but this situation doesn’t fully explain what is going on regularly on many gaming site forums.

quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
When it doesn't happen - they feel lied to. Do I believe Bethesda intentionally lied? No. But when they built hype to a fever-pitch for the release, then the publisher announces a delay in their financial outlook but the forum admins decry it as "unofficial", then days latter an official statement comes out -- they have to accept the flip-side of the hype they built.


The way I approach purchasing decisions as a consumer is first and foremost that my decision to purchase anything is my choice, period. If one allows themselves to get caught up in marketing and the hype builds in their mind to the point they make a decision to purchase something, to me that isn’t a good way to decide to purchase something. And it’s a tragedy when someone purchases something based on hype and then turn and blame the game, the developers, and the world instead of learning the lesson that it takes discipline and the ability to see through marketing to be a smart buyer and avoid buyer’s remorse.
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Post Wed Dec 21, 2005 3:41 pm
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Stranger In A Strange Land




Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia
   

quote:
Originally posted by TheMadGamer
The way I approach purchasing decisions as a consumer is first and foremost that my decision to purchase anything is my choice, period.


I couldn't agree more with that, and I think that trumps everything else...so - have a good Christmas.
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Post Wed Dec 21, 2005 8:38 pm
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
High Emperor




Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California
   

quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
I couldn't agree more with that, and I think that trumps everything else...so - have a good Christmas.


Merry Christmas to you as well!
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The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar
Post Thu Dec 22, 2005 2:56 pm
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
High Emperor




Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California
   

Found this little case-in-point right from RPGDots own, 'Dungeons & Dialog Trees' interview at http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1197

quote:
...it does bother me that previews can sometimes reveal important bits of a story before the game's release, and sometimes, what's worse, is it can set up just enough misleading information that people go off and speculate, keep speculating until it becomes "truth," then end up blaming us when the game doesn't have what they imagined would be in it.

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Post Thu Dec 22, 2005 3:15 pm
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