Games are expensive because players are trolls

[Angthoron]

So, I stumbled across this delightful piece of thoughtful journalism, which claims that games cost more to make because gamers are massive trorrus.

Behold the groriousu alticre:

http://www.theastronauts.com/2013/01/gamers-are-the-ultimate-trolls/

(Long article, soz, not posting it, however, I will post my own reaction to it)


~~~

A friend once told me a story about his experience with a certain ancient video game. He was working as a video game journalist at the time, and he attended the game’s reveal party. The demo began with him in a small room. The door right in front of him opened. So …he turned around and started walking. He got past the wall and exited the game level.

How is going off rails "trolling"? When I get a game, I want to explore, not walk in a straight line from start to finish. Yes, I know, game developers, I know, you want to control my fun. But you know what? Bugger off. I'll make my own fun, thank you very much.

My latest "superfun" experience was trying to get on top of some kind of achievement-related tower in Borderlands 2, with some bros, where we kept bouncing each others off the tower or putting our characters in the way of each others to screw up a jump. It's a game, not a tax report.

Also, me wonders how Unreal and Unreal Tournament came out to be such quality games if people are such horrible trolls. Could it be that the devs realized it and made gameplay open to straight AND trollish gameplay AND it only cost them two thousand extra? Hum hum!

In other words, they do things that would not make a lick of sense in the real life.

It's a game. Deal with it. I don't build cities in real life, nor do I deflect alien invasions as a lone gun in the middle of a metropolis. I'm also not a paladin.

Look, I reflect in the mirror! Holy shit, I shot a tree with a rocket launcher and split it in half! I destroyed a lamp, and now it’s dark in the room!

And because each year the mirrors and the trees and the lamps get better and better, and because game developers keep adding new ways of interacting with stuff

Haha. No. COD4BLOPS2 has less scenery/level interactivity than Red Faction 1 or even Serious Sam 1. Destructible trees? With tiny console RAM? Reflecting mirrors? I recall some AAAAAA-level game recently came out without that. Duke freaking Nukem 3D had "reflections". That's like 20 years ago. Great achievement guys. Anyway, moving on.

And we listen, because it’s guilt-free and no one gets hurt. At least that’s what we think.

You know what? It's a game. A virtual environment. Look it up. Nobody gets hurt.

Will skip the other two points, because at least those are kinda close to the truth. Not so much 3, but yeah, I do expect to find secrets if I poke "use" at all the walls in all of the areas of a level. Of course, these days, I won't find them, but that's another story. As for achievements, that's making people act like the dev wants them to act, so it's pretty much the antithesis of the article to begin with. How is it that you troll if your trolling is the way you're meant to act? Trolling is subversion of expected norms. Not conforming to that.

Problem is, just because we like to stick nails in electric sockets, we increase AAA game budgets by millions of dollars.

No, it's called QA. Besides, nobody is stopping EA from making full-rail shooters.

Oh and speaking of, it was player trolling that made BF3 stand out in the media thanks to players like birgirpall. EA didn't fix those "loopholes", either. They're entertaining. People like them. Some will be annoyed, but so what, someone might be annoyed by a perfect 20 killstreak, what then, auto-kill them at 15 for being too good?

Further considerations: Unreal, Half-Life 1, System Shock 2, Deus Ex. These games didn't lock content. They didn't shut the door behind you as soon as you entered a new zone. You could backtrack to different levels in SS2 and DE. And it even had a point, you could collect ammo you left behind, health kits, access previously closed areas with the new skills you gained. Now? Not only is there no way to get back, there's no point. So what millions exactly are spent on closing doors to places that bear no point? Did that shabby-looking door texture cost ten thousand to make? Really? 10 years ago, Silent Storm engine boasted FULL destruction of scenery, a solid physics/detection/bullet physics engine for a turnbased squad tactics game. 3 months ago, XCOM came out, not offering ANY of that. What gives?

So in the end, games get more expensive because of beta testing? Horrible lies. Beta testing is the most underpaid aspect of gamedev, most of reported bugs do not actually get fixed pre-release, and opinions of the often VERY well informed beta players are completely ignored. NDA also forbids them from telling potential buyers that there are terminal bugs that the company opted not to fix.

What makes the prices for games soar? DRM (toolkits cost money, always online costs server upkeep and personnel), voice acting, asset licensing, high-definition assets, high-poly modelling (and even that is cheaper than VA and assets) and cutscene direction/making + prerender animation.
It's like calling my customers trolls. "Oh, you such trolls, you don't install Java and Flash, you nasty trorrus. CUSTOMER REMORSE FOR YOU". No, it's QA and it comes with the price of the product/service. Goddamned apologist doritos-munching journalists. "Go with the flow", you say? No thanks.


DISCUSS!!!

 

[Infinitron]

What is there to say?

:declining:

 

[potatojohn]

Translation:

Why... why do I have to do all this work? Why can't I just do cocaine all day every day instead of just the weekends? My life is pain.

 

[Angthoron]

Translation:

Why... why do I have to do all this work? Why can't I just do cocaine all day every day instead of just the weekends? My life is pain.

I think it's more like "I wanted to work in game dev but then I realized I have to actually work, because fucking players won't accept my perfect vision and want to do something else. Fuckers!"

 

[hoverdog]

My take on translation:

I suck dicks

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

What makes the prices for games soar?

greed.

 

[Dexter]

 

[Angthoron]

My take on translation:

I suck dicks

I like how they haven't got a comments section.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Marketing budgets.

 

[felipepepe]

Oh my, how dare we PLAY while playing a game? How I hate frustated people that wanted to work on movies but ended up as game developers...

What makes the prices for games soar?

Also, marketing costs, especially for AAAA++ games.

 

[Angthoron]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention those in my blind rage.

 

[Black_Willow]

Dear God, I wish I had a second head so I could make a double-facepalm.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

What makes the prices for games soar?

Bloated teams and egomaniac producers/executives that change their opinions every week.

 

[Angthoron]

Oh, it seems to be a Potatoland website. of Potato Terra.

 

[Hellraiser]

Oh, it seems to be a Potatoland website. of Potato Terra.

It's Chmielarz's new team, you know the guy who made Painkiller and more recently Bulletstorm. And Chmielarz himself wrote that blog post. He already wrote/said some retarded things in the past. This is hardly surprising, consider him the Todd Howard/Cliffy B of Potato developers.

He is nowhere near the level of the CDP RED master race of potato gamedevelopers

 

[Black_Willow]

This is the website of Chmielarz (the guy who made Painkiller and Bulletstorm) and his team of faggots.

EDIT
Hellraiser is a smooth ninja.

 

[Metro]

Stop reading these game 'journalism' websites.

 

[Konjad]

I totally not understand the bitching. He does have some good points, like:

That’s why, by the way, The Walking Dead, everyone’s 2012 GOTY, worked so well. It looked us straight in the eye and said: “You know what? Fuck your freedom. You’ll only do stupid things with it. That’s not what our game is about. Now go and enjoy emotions.”

In the end he doesn't say that everyone has to spend millions of dollars on stupid crap to make the game playable, actually quite the opposite:

Luckily, there’s plenty. I just gave one example with what The Walking Dead has done. The other solution I like is just to …ignore the problem.
I think it was one of the Skyrim developers who said that the secret to their game (from the budget and production scale point of view) was that they actually sort of ignored the trolls. If someone wanted to screw up their experience – no problem. That’s why you have all these videos with people putting buckets on poor shopkeepers’ heads. The developer just didn’t care. It seemed to work for them just fine.

Angthoron

Haha. No. COD4BLOPS2 has less scenery/level interactivity than Red Faction 1 or even Serious Sam 1. Destructible trees? With tiny console RAM? Reflecting mirrors? I recall some AAAAAA-level game recently came out without that. Duke freaking Nukem 3D had "reflections". That's like 20 years ago. Great achievement guys. Anyway, moving on.

But do we really need things like destructible environments etc? No, it would be nice to have it, but I don't think majority (like 95% or more) of gamers consider the purchase of the game on how many "side things" you can do in it. If the cost of doing such a thing is too high then indeed it's better not to do it.

Crysis has a nice destructible environment to some point, but if it did not I doubt it would lose much in sales.

I can only do the opposite than you - complain that too many players want better and better graphic. I'd rather have this money put in other parts of the game development.

 

[GaffQ]

Stop reading these game 'journalism' websites.

They're not even game "journalists", they're indie developers with a self-indulgent blog:

We are an independent video game developer, madly excited to be making games we always wanted to make. Check back often, as we update our blog regularly.

(emphasis theirs)

"Error-checking and debugging are hard and boring, so if you do something unexpected and the game crashes it's your own fault."

 

[Weierstraß]

Blame the pirate, blame the consumers, blame the space lizards and the jews. It is strange how publishers' problems are never the fault of the publishers.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Now go and enjoy emotions.

Sure thing, just let me load my Painkiller game. Lots of emotions there.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

everyone is acting like this guy is blaming gamers but he is not
he even admits he is a 'troll'

In Half Life 2, when Alyx was telling me something important, I couldn’t hear it over the explosions of the grenades I kept throwing at her.

 

[Lyric Suite]

IBut do we really need things like destructible environments etc?

Infinitely more then we need cut-scenes and shitty quick time animations getting in the way of gameplay.

 

[Angthoron]

I totally not understand the bitching. He does have some good points, like:

That’s why, by the way, The Walking Dead, everyone’s 2012 GOTY, worked so well. It looked us straight in the eye and said: “You know what? Fuck your freedom. You’ll only do stupid things with it. That’s not what our game is about. Now go and enjoy emotions.”

Newsflash: TWD is an adventure game. With a few notable exceptions, that's how the genre works. Let's make all games adventure games? Oh wait, hang on a second, adventure games were deemed a "dead genre". Oh snap.

In the end he doesn't say that everyone has to spend millions of dollars on stupid crap to make the game playable, actually quite the opposite:

Luckily, there’s plenty. I just gave one example with what The Walking Dead has done. The other solution I like is just to …ignore the problem.
I think it was one of the Skyrim developers who said that the secret to their game (from the budget and production scale point of view) was that they actually sort of ignored the trolls. If someone wanted to screw up their experience – no problem. That’s why you have all these videos with people putting buckets on poor shopkeepers’ heads. The developer just didn’t care. It seemed to work for them just fine.

So uhh. Bethesda's QA fucked up and made a subpar AI. No problem, says journodev! It was intentional! Screw the trolls! Except what trolls? People thinking outside the box are trolls? People that discovered something by accident are trolls? People that don't want rails are trolls? What's this "troll" shit? Did the QA troll Bethesda when they said "Hey look, your AI doesn't react to buckets on their heads!"? And Bethesda was like "Haters gonna hate"?

Yes, leaving things for player to fuck around with is fine, but how the FUCK is any of it trolling? Is it like playing one game in a lifetime makes a hipster a gamer? What the fuck? As a legitimate troll, I am offended.

Angthoron

Haha. No. COD4BLOPS2 has less scenery/level interactivity than Red Faction 1 or even Serious Sam 1. Destructible trees? With tiny console RAM? Reflecting mirrors? I recall some AAAAAA-level game recently came out without that. Duke freaking Nukem 3D had "reflections". That's like 20 years ago. Great achievement guys. Anyway, moving on.

But do we really need things like destructible environments etc? No, it would be nice to have it, but I don't think majority (like 95% or more) of gamers consider the purchase of the game on how many "side things" you can do in it. If the cost of doing such a thing is too high then indeed it's better not to do it.

No, we need more text adventures. Heaven forbid terrain deformation and environment destructibility in FPS games 10 years after release of Red Faction 1 and Silent Storm. Poor AI coders wouldn't ever finish their buckethead AI, do you expect them to go around every fallen palmtree or jump over a collapsed wall? Lol bro, u mad.

I can only do the opposite than you - complain that too many players want better and better graphic. I'd rather have this money put in other parts of the game development.

Did I complain about graphics alone, dwarf ponymeister?

everyone is acting like this guy is blaming gamers but he is not
he even admits he is a 'troll'

In Half Life 2, when Alyx was telling me something important, I couldn’t hear it over the explosions of the grenades I kept throwing at her.

i trold an npc im hardcore trollz!!!!!!

Maybe the problem is that NPCs shouldn't be spouting useless exposition when all I want to do in my shooter is throw grenades at shit? Just a though, I'm probably wrong though.

 

[Gord]

Fucking huge dev teams might play a role, too.
Because people have to get paid, and if your team is 200 people instead of 20, you have to pay more money, obviously.
Now, whether those 200+ people are really necessary, I honestly don't know*, but going by some "insider" articles that show up every now and then, there is some serious overhead involved in typical AAA teams.

So uhh. Bethesda's QA fucked up and made a subpar AI. No problem, says journodev! It was intentional! Screw the trolls! Except what trolls? People thinking outside the box are trolls? People that discovered something by accident are trolls? People that don't want rails are trolls? What's this "troll" shit? Did the QA troll Bethesda when they said "Hey look, your AI doesn't react to buckets on their heads!"? And Bethesda was like "Haters gonna hate"?

Forgetting for a moment how stupid it is, in principle at least, it's a nice example for "emergent gameplay".

Well, it does at least show there's a working LOS mechanic present. Now they only need to implement a working "check for buckets on your head" mechanic...

*They are clearly not necessary for the great amount of freedom and environmental interaction modern games provide, because frankly, I'm not seeing it.

 

[Angthoron]

Fucking huge dev teams might play a role, too.
Because people have to get paid, and if your team is 200 people instead of 20, you have to pay more money, obviously.
Now, whether those 200+ people are really necessary, I honestly don't know*, but going by some "insider" articles that show up every now and then, there is some serious overhead involved in typical AAA teams.

*They are clearly not necessary for the great amount of freedom and environmental interaction modern games provide, because frankly, I'm not seeing it.

200 produce 200 man-hours in one real-life hour, as opposed to 20 people only producing 20. Obviously the larger the team the faster the production.

Except that's not exactly how it works, but I'm quite confident to say that his is one of the biggest reasons behind team bloat. If not THE biggest reason, really.