Randy Pitchford - Aliens: Colonial Marines Lawsuit Was "A Huge Waste of Time"

[Chris!(($$))!]

Sega still has some responsability in this mess because they didn´t watched Randy anc company and also they approved the final product to be released, but at least they learnt and evenin recognized they betrayed the fans, at the opposite of that douchebag.

Well from the looks of it, he deceived them. And considering Sega's situation over the last decade and the situation with money going into this game who could blame them for not scratching it after they saw the final build.

[THE CITY HUNTER]

Is gearbox making any new games?not that i am going to buy any

[esz]

I know this thread is old news, but I just stumbled upon it - i wasn't aware this lawsuit was a real thing. I've read all those articles and interviews you linked and I want to answer to some of Pitchford's silly claims.

First of all, it's true the market reacted correctly. The game didn't sell so well and many people decided not to buy other Gearbox games. But there's a line between market and false advertising. False advertising is a con, it shouldn't take place. You don't steal from people - stealing has nothing to do with the market, and so does false advertising.

Next, the analogy to ACM being one of Pitchford's children is just plain stupid. You love your kids because they are human beings, and you love them no matter what because you didn't really choose how they turned out. The game is your product. Its quality depends only on your skills in gamemaking. If you can't differ between a product, even if it's a piece of art, from your kid, then it's Ed Wood level of artistry. He made shit movies and loved all of them. He wasn't able to see their flaws because he was a talentless hack without any taste or knowledge of art.

And it seems, at first, that Pitchford is a hack too, if he won't even admit that ACM may be worse than other games. "It depends", he says, always avoiding a simple answer.

But I don't think he's a hack. I think whatever there was of an artist within him is gone now. There's just this soulless, lying, cynical, hypocrite businessman who doesn't care about quality, only sales. He won't say the game is lacking, because screw gamers - he's afraid he'll scare the investors and shareholders.

Well, that's fine for you, Randy, you get richer, your company gets points. But you've become an asshole and it's not an issue of the community. It's only your problem.

That's all I had to say.

[RagingDragon]

Spoiler

I know this thread is old news, but I just stumbled upon it - i wasn't aware this lawsuit was a real thing. I've read all those articles and interviews you linked and I want to answer to some of Pitchford's silly claims.

First of all, it's true the market reacted correctly. The game didn't sell so well and many people decided not to buy other Gearbox games. But there's a line between market and false advertising. False advertising is a con, it shouldn't take place. You don't steal from people - stealing has nothing to do with the market, and so does false advertising.

Next, the analogy to ACM being one of Pitchford's children is just plain stupid. You love your kids because they are human beings, and you love them no matter what because you didn't really choose how they turned out. The game is your product. Its quality depends only on your skills in gamemaking. If you can't differ between a product, even if it's a piece of art, from your kid, then it's Ed Wood level of artistry. He made shit movies and loved all of them. He wasn't able to see their flaws because he was a talentless hack without any taste or knowledge of art.

And it seems, at first, that Pitchford is a hack too, if he won't even admit that ACM may be worse than other games. "It depends", he says, always avoiding a simple answer.

But I don't think he's a hack. I think whatever there was of an artist within him is gone now. There's just this soulless, lying, cynical, hypocrite businessman who doesn't care about quality, only sales. He won't say the game is lacking, because screw gamers - he's afraid he'll scare the investors and shareholders.

Well, that's fine for you, Randy, you get richer, your company gets points. But you've become an asshole and it's not an issue of the community. It's only your problem.

That's all I had to say.

[close]

Preach it.

Holy egomania, Batman. This guy would rather be 'right' and never sell another game than simply man up and apologize.

Also, I agree with the cocaine assessment.

And this, so much. I mean how many developers in the industry have made mistakes and not only have they taken steps to correct those mistakes, but they've come out and said "mistakes were made, and I/we apologize."

I mean come on, try and have the most basic human decency after you flagrantly lied to and ripped off an entire fan base with a complete failure of a game that could've been the second coming of Aliens-level action video games.

To this day I've stuck to my word and will never buy another Gearbox product. I tell my friends to do the same, because Borderlands really isn't that fun anyway lol. I even liked it for awhile before A:CM came out, but never again.

I'm equally as disgusted that they got ahold of the Homeworld remaster, which was one of my favorite games of all time. Certainly won't be picking that up, and it's a shame.

But Pitchfraud has proven to this day that he's a giant asshole. He reaffirms this every time he opens his mouth on the subject.

[chainsawsquirrel]

A:CM being falsely advertised was NOT a legitimate case?

It is neither acceptable, nor adequate and is in obvious fact, an abomination.

That game was very very obviously a piece of shit! And was looking pretty damn awesome in the adverts, graphically. AI was not what they said it would be either. They seemed to be thinking on the right lines judging by what they'd said in interviews (bloody lies they were!) The aliens are dumb as f**k.

[Olde]

Have any cases of video game fraud where the plaintiff is just a customer ever been found in favor of the plaintiff? No, because judges don't give a shit about gamers and can't tell a bad game from a good one.

What makes me facepalm the most is that people saw the original trailer and were pumped for the game. I thought the trailer looked mediocre at best and I had a very strong feeling that the game would be shit.

[JP]

Have any cases of video game fraud where the plaintiff is just a customer ever been found in favor of the plaintiff? No, because judges don't give a shit about gamers and can't tell a bad game from a good one.

Well apparently neither do the customers since people actually bought and preordered this garbage, letting once again scammers like this getting away with their hyped up games and false advertising. Here's a new idea: next time dont buy stuff on impulse because you are crazy about some franchise but instead wait for the reviews. It will save you a lot of money and punish these unscrupulous developers.

[Le Celticant]

I'm pretty sure the problem in the first place was a problem of scale concerning the project.
They had too high ambitions and probably wanted to make a bigger / better MMOFPS that would have been remember for a decade.

That's pretty much what I feel like when I take a look at the old articles of the game and the screenshots.
They seems to be this massive thing that even managed to end up as an embryo in the game.

For example, there's something absolutely useless that got implemented in the final game:
The customization.
It's a typical thing for large scale game (or call of duty fps, but it serves as a rank purpose well defined here).
It was absolutely unnecessary to give us such a wide choice of skins, abilities, weapons customization with the kind of game we got since it has a level much lower in terms of development than any previous game.

I think they had big eyes, and wanted to make something incredible, probably way too much incredible.
First concept arts suggested we would see earth, space stations, asteroid stations, LV-426 and some uncharted worlds.
We ended up with simply an homage to ALIENS locations and some generic random places.
It's pretty obvious that all we see in game was already done back in 2008/2009.
I think what actually happened is that they spent way too much time brainstorming and saw that SEGA would not let them make this kind of scaled project telling them to keep low (lack of finance).
I'm sure they had a load of money to make a AAA game but not enough to make an incredible scale game.
So stuck in the middle, they packed up the game as it was, spent some money on communication and took the rest that was not enough to make their epic scale game.

I'm pretty sure everyone in the end is disappointed.
SEGA for their wallet, gearbox for being finally able to work on an Alien game (which studio wouldn't be happy to get to work on a AAA star wars / alien game?) and not being able to do what they wanted and the consumer who was in the middle of all this terrible storm.

Back then I remembered that I hated Pitchford and Gearbox, but now that I think about it, I think they are as much pissed off as we are.
It all got pretty clear when I played Alien Isolation.
The game is near perfect. Atmosphere, gameplay, engine, blablabla.
The only thing this could happen is because they remained pretty low and safe in their ambitions. You have a very little amount of objects, updates, the story is pretty simple and happens in the same place.
Gearbox on the other hand wanted too much, like different pulserifle variations, a lot of new aliens from comic books, hell they even spent time to figure out if the 95 magazine of the pulserifle was possible.

I'd bet it's what killed the game because the initial ambition there was back in 2008 was incredibly positive and supportive.

It's probably also the fact I do mods for AVP2 that lowered my standard.
Everyone wants too much, I remember back being a tester for AJL mod that people thought it would be a good idea to have aliens capable of making a hive in a map, then being able to drag a player to incubate him and spawn an army of AI.
Nice idea, I'm pretty sure all Aliens fans always thought it would be cool (and I'm sure Gearbox thought so too) but the amount of work required to do that is astronomical.

[chainsawsquirrel]

They say that if you aim high but miss, at least you'll fall amongst the stars. Could that be said about colonial marines? No. Colonial marines fell in the mud. Personally, I think this was a simple effort to cash in on the fan base. Build up the hype train, spend little to no money or time on the game and build up the pre-order numbers. All my local game stores had sold out of ALL copies of A:CM the day before launch, I shit you not.

[Le Celticant]

They say that if you aim high but miss, at least you'll fall amongst the stars. Could that be said about colonial marines? No. Colonial marines fell in the mud. Personally, I think this was a simple effort to cash in on the fan base. Build up the hype train, spend little to no money or time on the game and build up the pre-order numbers. All my local game stores had sold out of ALL copies of A:CM the day before launch, I shit you not.

It doesn't make sense to hire actors, put so many new alien characters, weapons and objects in a game and make a so wide variety of maps if you wanted to spend as little money as possible.
Why would you make a customization menu in the first place if budget was a concern?

Something happened and we'll never know.

[426Buddy]

I'm pretty sure the project started with big goals in mind but at some point gearbox decided it cared more about borderlands 2 and just stopped working on or really developing aliens. It should have been cancelled but instead we got one of the worst games I've played in recent memory.

[Flexserve]

If it was a waste of time..why did it take a fan to fix a laundry list of problems, including and execute file that infinitely relaunches the game! Why was this not fixed then? The title shown to us was a vertical slice and they absolutely lied about the game. They knew this game had actually been developed YEARS before  they started advertising it (The engine can show you that without even getting into the poor graphics and scripting execution). Randy is full of POOP and I personally will never ever buy from Gearbucks ($$$$) software again. They have lost my trust; and when you lose trust in a person or a company the relationship is over.

[Olde]

Like that even matters. I buy games based on reviews, gameplay videos, articles, assessments, etc. I (usually) don't make sporadic buying choices, and I never pre-order a game. Who in their right mind would wait before consumer reports to buy a car? I actually value my time and money enough to not take chances anymore on seeing if a game is a bad investment.

It doesn't matter anyway. All the kiddies will keep pre-ordering Gearbox's games with Mommy and Daddy's money, and they will never produce a good game again if they can just keep getting Mommy and Daddy's money by churning out shit that an idiot teenager--their main demographic--can't tell is a bad game in the first place. You guys are all under this bizarre delusion that big budget video game companies actually care about their products' quality. News flash: they don't.

[chainsawsquirrel]

They say that if you aim high but miss, at least you'll fall amongst the stars. Could that be said about colonial marines? No. Colonial marines fell in the mud. Personally, I think this was a simple effort to cash in on the fan base. Build up the hype train, spend little to no money or time on the game and build up the pre-order numbers. All my local game stores had sold out of ALL copies of A:CM the day before launch, I shit you not.

It doesn't make sense to hire actors, put so many new alien characters, weapons and objects in a game and make a so wide variety of maps if you wanted to spend as little money as possible.
Why would you make a customization menu in the first place if budget was a concern?

Something happened and we'll never know.

Well for one thing, the actors who they did manage to hire (Al Matthews, Michael Beihn & Mark Rolston and a Hudson impersonator), no disrespect to any of them, but they're not exactly big time actors anymore. I doubt they'd have spent that much money on them. Plus, their characters were used as a pre-order incentive, which is where the vast majority of sales came from. Customisation menu was probably just added because that was just the sort of thing that was expected from modern shooters at the time.

[HuDaFuK]

Well for one thing, the actors who they did manage to hire (Al Matthews, Michael Beihn & Mark Rolston and a Hudson impersonator), no disrespect to any of them, but they're not exactly big time actors anymore.

Judging by Biehn's performance, he knew full well the game was a piece of shit too. I smell contractual obligation.