The Game's Development Story Discussion

Started by Salt The Fries, Feb 08, 2013, 08:18:47 PM

Author
The Game's Development Story Discussion (Read 99,967 times)

OpenMaw

I admit, I half expected Beavis and Butthead to show up at that point and go "Did you, like, put it in her butt?" "Huh huh!"

jahickson

Hahaha right? My god, the writing is horrible. This is probably the best review I have seen haha:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/12/3979816/today-i-played-aliens-colonial-marines

Paladinrja

Quote from: jahickson on Feb 13, 2013, 10:58:33 PM
That's not all true though. A lot, of the outsourcing firms work for multiple different companies and if GBX goes, it may be one lost partner, but I doubt GBX is going to have them help them again anyway... Not because they are bad mind you, but just for the sake of their own f**ked up PR and using Time Gate and the scapegoat for A:CM.

I have faith Time Gate will be OK. In the end, they most likely received all their money from GBX for this game... So sales will not necessarily have an impact for Time Gate... (although, since they did more than simple outsourcing, they may have a profit sharing agreement but I do not know that as fact... I would be surprised if they did)...

Again, the bigger plot point is I think we may see a showdown between Sega and GBX. No one is commenting which seems to suggest some legal repercussions may be underway.


Also the HORRIBLE part of the game to me was NOT outsourced...  ;) The horrid story and dialogue... Mikey Nuemann needs to stop writing. Period.

"We had a thing.... A sex thing."

oh brother! haha  ::)

I think theres more going on here than is known so far. I also forsee a certain amount of aportioned blame by the venture partners themselves. Doesn't really matter - thier first duty should be to fix this, get that cost and then work out who's footing the bill.

jahickson


I think theres more going on here than is known so far.
[/quote]

I do too. I say we give it a few days and see what happens.

SM

SM

#124
QuoteMy god, the writing is horrible.

Excrutiating.

DB

DB

#125
Quote from: ikarop on Feb 13, 2013, 10:07:10 PM
http://forums.timegate.com/showthread.php?p=285152#post285152

:D :D :D

It is a rare thing to see a game that is of such atrocious quality that its post release hype-lash debacle delivers such a juicy hurting of the butts.

More! More, I say! So many twists and turns in this story!

Ash 937

Damn...I got A:CM on launch day but have not had the time to open it on account of my work schedule.  I'm seriously contemplating returning it to get a full refund.  I have no doubt that it will cost $29.99 in a few weeks and then drop to $19.99 within a few months.

I knew it would be bad...but it's been a long time since I anticipated the release of a video game that earned a grip of review scores that were less than 5/10 overall.

[T)A]DarkDragon

Not sure how creditable this article is but it is quite interesting.
http://kotaku.com/5984068/how-aliens-colonial-marines-fell-apart

Xhan

Xhan

#128
As with AlienĀ³, there's plenty of blame to go around.

To those whom say the Borderlands 2 did not interfere with A:CM's development, you are quite simply wrong. It's never going to be brought up in public or brought from behind closed doors, but BL2 impacted A:CM severely in the same way NOLF2 impacted AvP2, but to an even greater degree.

As for the story, it was done years ago. Literally. I actually pretty much called what was going to happen to the story point for point in 2007 and posted pretty much what we see in game then on the GBX forums. It wasn't word for word, but it was close enough that Mikey and Randy both addressed the thread directly themselves to allay concerns and give reasons why LV-426 should and would be re-explored, and why Marine gun-pr0n was the key to keeping user interest.

The story did get vastly simplified in regards to NPC happenstance and twists and turns, and some of that is actually still in the files thereof, but most of it, including what happened to other marines was set in stone.

Contrary to popular belief outsourcing happens all the time, and your favorite game probably contains a metric f**kton of outsourced or freelanced assets. I should know, it's one of the things I do.

Your favorite sword in that one adventure game was probably made by a chinese twentysomething in a literal art asset factory.

Assets outsourced can be an issue when there's no oversight or consistency amongst the art design and leads, and that's what happened here. When outsourcing you need a wrangler, Dead Space 2 and 3 contain a ton of chinese outsourced assets and the reason you can't tell between Visceral's and the contract people is because there was folks on both ends cracking the consistency whip.

That didn't happen in A:CM.

Hopping staff is also game design suicide, and it happened frequently throughout A:CM's development, by every company involved, including GBX, and even SEGA themselves.

Gearbox is a good company. They have a very flat management layer, they adapt quickly and their staff is loyal to a fault, and I mean literal fault, but even well intentioned folks can f**k stuff up, especially when you're playing musical chairs with design and implementation, again as  AlienĀ³ showed rather handily.

Sticking with the horrendous story and leaving behind the original tactical decision design base when the first iteration didn't work perfectly doomed SP from the beginning, the bad programming and lack of polish is simply icing on the cake.

Not sticking to canon for events and Alien design also shut a door before anyone could get through it. There's always a risk when you reinvent an already perfectly balanced wheel, and in THAT instance, yes GBX is guilty as hell and they knew they would be from the beginning and chose to do it anyway for the sake of colonial marine gun-pr0n fanservice, and it's pretty clear that was absolutely the wrong choice.

That's actually a good thing though. It's proven once and for all that you need balance and the Alien itself to be held in absolute esteem for a licensed product to have a rat's chance in hell of succeeding, and the oorah-gun-masturbation fantasy is just as terrible and ridiculous as it sounds on paper.

As for the combat design itself, those things could still be fixed, but this is SEGA, a game company literally fifteen years behind the design curve of modern interactive digital fiction and one of the WORST licensed-game producers in the world, hands down.

They aren't going to put out the money for more than the allotted set of rollouts and probably a preapproved number of title updates, whether patches or DLC. They are legally obligated to support the game until august, so you can expect to see stuff further down the road, but there's never going to be a total overhaul, and frankly there's never been one from from any other game company either, ever; expecting one now is pretty naive.

Never license something you don't actually understand, and never commit to something you're not really interested in are the lessons to be learned here.

While the external stuff could be fixed, no one's going to put up the money, and for the story, anyone who paid the least bit of attention knew it gonna be bad from day one.

Good thing MP is really fun, if not even remotely balanced (marine dragon punch elbow, 1 hit across the map battle rifle for three points, super megaton exploding kamikaze spitters)

Xenomorphine

Quote from: ShadowPred on Feb 13, 2013, 05:27:27 AM
Christ, Gearbox...what the f**k happened? Holy shit.

People like this happened.

http://www.gamefront.com/gearboxs-randy-pitchford-reviewers-who-dont-like-duke-nukem-forever-will-be-held-accountable/

Am still confused by how people kept investing 100% belief in his interviews, even after being warned of the kind of things he's said in the past.

Especially when he compared 'Duke Nukem Forever' as being just as good as 'Half-Life 2'.

ShadowPred

Quote from: Xenomorphine on Feb 14, 2013, 04:44:17 AM
Quote from: ShadowPred on Feb 13, 2013, 05:27:27 AM
Christ, Gearbox...what the f**k happened? Holy shit.

People like this happened.

http://www.gamefront.com/gearboxs-randy-pitchford-reviewers-who-dont-like-duke-nukem-forever-will-be-held-accountable/

Am still confused by how people kept investing 100% belief in his interviews, even after being warned of the kind of things he's said in the past.

Especially when he compared 'Duke Nukem Forever' as being just as good as 'Half-Life 2'.


I always heard how much of a douche he was at the backlash the game got, but I never read any exact quotes. Holy shit is Randy a pretentious bastard. Yeah, can't trust a word he says now...ever.

Cal427eb

Quote from: jahickson on Feb 13, 2013, 11:07:06 PM
Hahaha right? My god, the writing is horrible. This is probably the best review I have seen haha:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/12/3979816/today-i-played-aliens-colonial-marines
Did he say based off of Prometheus:laugh:

Snowdog

Quote from: Stringer2355 on Feb 14, 2013, 05:23:54 PM
How Aliens: Colonial Marines Fell Apart

http://kotaku.com/5984068/how-aliens-colonial-marines-fell-apart

If this is true that means that gearbox actually made something good. And what they showed us in 2011 was from their own software. It's really upsetting to read that another studio f*cks it up so badly and that gearbox is gonna take the fall from that.

ScardyFox

Quote from: Snowdog on Feb 14, 2013, 06:01:08 PM
Quote from: Stringer2355 on Feb 14, 2013, 05:23:54 PM
How Aliens: Colonial Marines Fell Apart

http://kotaku.com/5984068/how-aliens-colonial-marines-fell-apart

If this is true that means that gearbox actually made something good. And what they showed us in 2011 was from their own software. It's really upsetting to read that another studio f*cks it up so badly and that gearbox is gonna take the fall from that.

I don't understand exactly. If they had a budget as huge as it was why did they choose to outsource to this degree? Why not get extra staff so you can keep a personal eye on it? In particular if you're weary with TG to begin with?

Something seems fishy.


Snowdog

Quote from: ScardyFox on Feb 14, 2013, 06:09:23 PM
Quote from: Snowdog on Feb 14, 2013, 06:01:08 PM
Quote from: Stringer2355 on Feb 14, 2013, 05:23:54 PM
How Aliens: Colonial Marines Fell Apart

http://kotaku.com/5984068/how-aliens-colonial-marines-fell-apart

If this is true that means that gearbox actually made something good. And what they showed us in 2011 was from their own software. It's really upsetting to read that another studio f*cks it up so badly and that gearbox is gonna take the fall from that.

I don't understand exactly. If they had a budget as huge as it was why did they choose to outsource to this degree? Why not get extra staff so you can keep a personal eye on it? In particular if you're weary with TG to begin with?

Something seems fishy.

Agree on the fishy part.

I don't hate the game but I dislike the human enemy thing. It sucks!!! The alien parts on the other hand are better but I'm never scared. If an alien shows up I'll just shoot it and continue my journey. No need for a motion tracker no real tension. So thats kind of lame. Such a shame that a game with so much potential got released in Alpha game quality....

Still don't hate it but I'm not loving it either.

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