Old PC developers who now make shovelware/popamole games

[Daedalos]

In your view, bad game companies yes. In eyes of millions of others. Nah. Bioware might have made some pretty mediocre stuff lately, but they got a history of excellent games for their time.

So millions of retards like Bioware. Ok.

And Peter co-founded legendary Bullfrog... you calling that a "bad company" too? lel. okay.

Bullfrog is dead you moron.

When is your game coming out btw? I'd love to play it and judge it.

The point is, that I'm supporting old devs who made excellent games and founded excellent companies, and they still got that, most of em, from the list. So yea, there's alot of old guys not just making facebook apps and mobile shit ports of some game.. as the OP was calling out.

Peter surely ain't one of em. And I would gladly support him, because of what he's done in the past. Partly why I also still support Brian Fargo and InXile. Because, untill proven wrong, I hold my judgement until it's time for that.

I could remind you that Bioware devs was reponsible for Baldurs, NWN, kotor etc... games which have been rated some of the highest RPGs of all time on this very site...

gg

 

[DalekFlay]

I think Infinitron mostly nailed it, but there's also the fact some of these guys might not be that talented. A large group of people work on each game, who knows which of them made those decisions that ultimately led to incline. Some of them might be talentless hacks or poster boys riding on Harvey Smith's coattails, for example.

 

[DragoFireheart]

The point is, that I'm supporting old devs who made excellent games and founded excellent companies, and they still got that, most of em, from the list. So yea, there's alot of old guys not just making facebook apps and mobile shit ports of some game.. as the OP was calling out.

The game doesn't have to be on facebook or mobile platform to be shit.

Peter surely ain't one of em. And I would gladly support him, because of what he's done in the past. Partly why I also still support Brian Fargo and InXile. Because, untill proven wrong, I hold my judgement until it's time for that.

Kill yourself.

Good game devs are the exception and not the rule. Can you argue that?

 

[WhiteGuts]

Why are you doing this

 

[Daedalos]

The point is, that I'm supporting old devs who made excellent games and founded excellent companies, and they still got that, most of em, from the list. So yea, there's alot of old guys not just making facebook apps and mobile shit ports of some game.. as the OP was calling out.

The game doesn't have to be on facebook or mobile platform to be shit.

Peter surely ain't one of em. And I would gladly support him, because of what he's done in the past. Partly why I also still support Brian Fargo and InXile. Because, untill proven wrong, I hold my judgement until it's time for that.

Kill yourself.

You are an angry young man. You should seek help for that I think. It's not healthy being that angry all the time. Perhaps some meds for your aspergers flaring up in inapropriate moments too. But whatevs.

 

[DragoFireheart]

You are an angry young man. You should seek help for that I think. It's not healthy being that angry all the time. Perhaps some meds for your aspergers flaring up in inapropriate moments too. But whatevs.

Ad hominem.

 

[TripJack]

You'll find that it's much harder to make a list of Great Old Ones making great NEW games.

impossible actually

Mass effect 1-2-3 ... hardly THAT pop-a-mole, eh?

good one bro

 

[bussinrounds]

Well, you've certainly earned that tag.

I'm not seeing the dumbfuck tag though, just the fanboy one.

 

[TheGreatOne]

Daedalos I meant individual game designers like Chris Avellone and Brian Fargo, not entire developers. It's sad and perplexing to see some one from being one of the main designers in a game like Thief or Deus Ex to designing (or atleast developing) garbage.

Oh and regarding Molyneux:

 

[sexbad?]

Once a level designer for Duke Nukem 3D and Ritual Entertainment's games, Richard "Levelord" Gray's latest game is Becky Brogan - The Mystery of Meane Manor.

 

[agentorange]

I think Infinitron mostly nailed it, but there's also the fact some of these guys might not be that talented. A large group of people work on each game, who knows which of them made those decisions that ultimately led to incline. Some of them might be talentless hacks or poster boys riding on Harvey Smith's coattails, for example.

I think this is quite true, but you make them sound like bad people. I think it's the case that there are lot of people who are just good at doing the work they are told to do, and just see it as a job, and aren't concerned with what they're working on. There may be some very talented coders, hell even artists and writers (though probably less so with writers), who don't even play video games and think they are stupid, but earn good money working on them, and chances are they make a whole lot more working on iphone shit and facebook shit.

 

[Cadmus]

The people and companies still creating good shit and fighting the good fight.

Peter Molyneux

Mike Diskett

Most of Blizzard Entertainment (well they begun to make console ports and argueable more "popa-molish" centered games, but still

The Creative Assembly

Rockstar

InXile

Obsidian

Larian

BioWare

Remedy

While I agree that Blizzard and Bioware don't really make what you'd call shovelware, they also produce utter shit games so no, they aren't fighting the good fight.
What's Remedy done lately? Peter Molyneux I've tagged as a moron from the time Black and White was released. What's he done that wasn't total shit in the past 10 years or so? Your list is too inclusive of shit developers solely on the premise that they don't make mobile games.

 

[Telengard]

The people and companies still creating good shit and fighting the good fight.

Peter Molyneux

Mike Diskett

Most of Blizzard Entertainment (well they begun to make console ports and argueable more "popa-molish" centered games, but still

The Creative Assembly

Rockstar

InXile

Obsidian

Larian

BioWare

Remedy

I invite you to peer - not into the future - but into the present.

Blizzard Games, Mobile (not to mention, it's Acti-Bliz with many other phone games)

• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (2014)

Bioware (not to mention is a subsidiary of EA, who produce lots and lots of phone game from other divisions)

• Mass Effect Galaxy (2009) (iOS)
• Mass Effect Intruder (2012) (iPhone, Android)

InXile

• Fantastic Contraption (2008) (Flash, iPhone/iPodTouch)
• Super Stacker (2009) (iPhone/iPodTouch)
• Super Stacker 2 (2009) (iPhone/iPodTouch)
• Shape Shape (2009) (iPhone/iPodTouch)

Larian

• Easter Egg Invaders (iPhone)

Remedy

• Death Rally (iOS, Android, Windows)
  
• Agents of Storm (2014) (ios)

Rockstar

• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

And this is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg.

Phone games are everywhere, and being made in almost every company. They're (relatively) cheap to fund, quick to make, and have a large pool of users (potential buyers, to marketing). But most of all, they're easy to find investors for. Hell, many an old developer can fund them themselves. Which is a much different thing than running around trying to raise 20 million dollars for a regular game that's going to be considered "low-budget" with piss-poor graphics that most people will just sneer at, much less raising 100 million for AAA.

 

[sser]

The X-Men Legends games were actually really good. I had a great deal of fun bamfing about as Nightcrawler. Marvel Ultimate Alliance had interesting spell-combos, but I felt like the X-Men games were just better.


Anyway...

Brian Reynolds is the most WTF drop off to me.

Lead designer on Civ II, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations, three all-time great strategy games.

Now? Making 'Ville games for Zynga/Facebook. Sometimes even 'Ville sequels, like CityVille2.

Wouldn't surprise me if he was making more money with Zynga, but goddam. Maybe it was the decline of strategy games in the early 00s, but it's confusing to me that no other companies tried to poach him.

 

[grudgebringer]

Once a level designer for Duke Nukem 3D and Ritual Entertainment's games, Richard "Levelord" Gray's latest game is Becky Brogan - The Mystery of Meane Manor.

Yeah, I cry for Levelord. Status: enslaved. His level designs and interactivity were so badass.

 

[Azrael the cat]

In fairness, if you've made Thief or Deus Ex, what are you going to do these days? You probably aren't all that keen on remaking the game, even as a spiritual successor - it's unlikely that any current attempt will greatly surpass the original (most of your old fans will breathe a sigh of relief if it's 'good for what it is'), and even if it could, you've already made that game and you're really fucking happy with it.

So you look around for ideas for a different type of game, but one with similar standards to your old work. What are your options? Go cap in hand to publishers half your age who have never heard of your games, and get a gig for a massively compromised version of your original idea, in which you're just shilling to impress and enrich the publishers? Fuck that, you did that when you first left college. Go to kickstarter? Might be good for some types of game, but utterly unproven, unlikely to give you anything resembling a AAA budget. Again, fuck that - your 'Deus Ex'/'Thief' days were spent at the cutting edge of game design; you're not going to beg for money in order to make something that's old-tech with a game design that's massively restricted by budget.

But there's these new devices on the market that let you make games with a small team, and the financiers are giving you almost complete freedom. Sure, they aren't grand impressive statements, but at least these are games you haven't made before, and it's new tech. You're problem-solving and working out the limits of the platform, with no rigid industry expectations about what a game should be. It's even reminding you a little of your youth spent coding on your C64: to you it's a vast world of new challenges and new techniques, and even if the product itself is rather derivative, it's been a long time since you had the opportunity to go to work and do something that you haven't already done a dozen times before.

I've never played a phone/tablet-game other than Snake, but what's attractive to a game developer isn't necessarily what's going to be attractive to us as fans.

 

[Infinitron]

The X-Men Legends games were actually really good. I had a great deal of fun bamfing about as Nightcrawler. Marvel Ultimate Alliance had interesting spell-combos, but I felt like the X-Men games were just better.


Anyway...

Brian Reynolds is the most WTF drop off to me.

Lead designer on Civ II, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations, three all-time great strategy games.

Now? Making 'Ville games for Zynga/Facebook. Sometimes even 'Ville sequels, like CityVille2.

Wouldn't surprise me if he was making more money with Zynga, but goddam. Maybe it was the decline of strategy games in the early 00s, but it's confusing to me that no other companies tried to poach him.

Actually, Brian Reynolds left Zynga last year to create his own mobile game development company, SecretNewCo.

 

[sser]

The X-Men Legends games were actually really good. I had a great deal of fun bamfing about as Nightcrawler. Marvel Ultimate Alliance had interesting spell-combos, but I felt like the X-Men games were just better.


Anyway...

Brian Reynolds is the most WTF drop off to me.

Lead designer on Civ II, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations, three all-time great strategy games.

Now? Making 'Ville games for Zynga/Facebook. Sometimes even 'Ville sequels, like CityVille2.

Wouldn't surprise me if he was making more money with Zynga, but goddam. Maybe it was the decline of strategy games in the early 00s, but it's confusing to me that no other companies tried to poach him.

Actually, Brian Reynolds left Zynga last year to create his own mobile game development company, SecretNewCo.

Aye. I'm assuming there's truckloads of money to be made in the mobile game market. I think that 'Flappy Bird' game was making $40,000+ a day or something for the guy who designed it...

 

[Baron Dupek]

Wonder what D.W.Bradley do now. Maybe he prepare another assault on our sanity with another bugfet filled with furryfest?

 

[Drakron]

But, who knows what the future holds.

It holds decline and shit games.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Once a level designer for Duke Nukem 3D and Ritual Entertainment's games, Richard "Levelord" Gray's latest game is Becky Brogan - The Mystery of Meane Manor.

If you type "Levelord" while playing, you get a message saying "You shouldn't be playing this."

 

[JarlFrank]

In your view, bad game companies yes. In eyes of millions of others. Nah.

"You might think eating shit is disgusting but trillions of flies love eating it, therefore your opinion doesn't count, shit must be awesome if all the flies fly on it!"

 

[CyberP]

Fuck, look at the slamming of all these shitty dev studios, stated as if the shittyness is almost objective. I think I've found a home here, but I dunno, some of you lack discipline and a certain perspective. [insert Arnie .gif]

And as for Molyneux, he made Fable series... hardly shovelware either :D

OK, it's unique in ways I'll give it that, but it's still a steaming turd.

In your view, bad game companies yes. In eyes of millions of others. Nah.

"You might think eating shit is disgusting but trillions of flies love eating it, therefore your opinion doesn't count, shit must be awesome if all the flies fly on it!"

 

[dunno lah]

I was "researching" a little on Crusader (I'm playing No Remorse currently, and loving it) and guess what:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13960-Meet-Tony-Zurovec

Edit: Should've posted this too:

http://af.gog.com/news/your_questions_about_crusader_answered_by_tony_zurovec?as=1649904300

 

[shihonage]

The reason they're doing mobile games is because of alimony payments, lazy entitled children, retirement funds, new medical expenses, reduced endurance for nightmarish dev. cycles, and, of course, general disllusionment in their earlier hopes and dreams.