Editorial Feargus Urquhart and Ray Muzyka's DICE 2013 Panel: The Future of the RPG Genre

[pistletoe]

Shut the fuck up Ray, you soulless piece of shit. If hear his crap about the boundaries of RPG's blurring one more time...

 

[Larendav]

Developers of action games with stats talk about future of RPGs. How cute.

 

[Excidium]

Did Feargus do a live slam dunk on stage?

 

[racofer]

Edgydex delivers ITT.

 

[Lancehead]

People complaining about them talking about RPGs from a business point of view when the talk was about the future of RPGs from a business point of view

What they talked about can be practically applied to any genre, really. But that perhaps is the underlining, that RPGs have permeated into multitude of genres.

 

[Black]

Isn't Muzyka retired?

Retarded might be the word you're looking for and yes he is.

 

[Shadenuat]

Fearghus:

: RPGs I love RPGs Making RPGs thousands of lines of dialogue so fun and I want continue make RPGs we want players play our games the way they want to play it

Muzyka: :

New platforms, business models, social gaming, gamers behaviour patterns... we must fully embrace online... promotional, marketing...

 

[Infinitron]

Heh, to be fair, Feargus seemed fairly excited about the multiplayer/social stuff as well.

 

[Volourn]

"Why is Muzyka giving a speech on the future of the RPG genre when he HAS no future in RPGS. Hasn't he gone off to steal money from richer people by "mentoring" them in getting even richer? Fucking scumbag."

Because he has every intention of coming back to the gaming industry once his contract witH EA runs out. Otherwise, he likely wouldn't waste his time with such an event.

 

[LittleJoe]

Ray Muzyka talking about ways to "monetize" the player, is one of the ugliest things I've ever heard.
Sure, it's their job to sell the games they produce, but you don't do it by telling the player that he's just a dollar sign to you.

 

[Volourn]

Sure you do. Only ignorant idiotic customers think they aren't. And, those toolbags probably don't waste their time watchings uch vids anyways. R00fles!

 

[villain of the story]

Feargus makesa a few small nods towards old games almost like he wants to assert that RPGs have declined but ends up not going through with it because he's not an assertive character.

"In some ways we're almost saying it's all the old stuff that makes RPGs new in a certain way, but... <buzzwords>"

 

[villain of the story]

It's also very amusing to see Muzyka say (around 15:25) how it's worth it to have analytics and telemetry experts and marketing teams to get statistics for the secret to succeed with online games and also "with any genre", how it is vital to success, considering the failure of TOR. Perhaps he shouldn't have forgotten to hire fucking game developers instead of soulless exploitative bureaucrats. Then again, he was possibly thinking that he was a game developer himself.

Feargus replies, trying to explain that statistics is not the end all be all, asks what the chance that someone would play through their games a second time and Muzyka makes an insertion without interrupting: "we measured that".

Anyway, what's with Feargus's anxiety?

 

[Infinitron]

You didn't mention that Feargus also implied that statistics could make it hard to capture the fact that there are different kinds of players, each with their own set of preferences.

 

[racofer]

Anyway, what's with Feargus's anxiety?

Feargus: Oh shit oh shit oh shit!!! *sweat rolls down the forehead*
DICE Assistant: Mr. Feargus, you're on in 5.
Feargus: Ok thanks! *dries out his face sweat with a silk scarf*
Feargus: The Codex is watching, Feargus. Mind what you say in there. The Codex is watching. The Codex is watching...

 

[Wizfall]

It doesn't bother me at all they talk about "monetizing" the customer, it's the business, people lives of that. Nothing shameful about it.
Curious the interest of both if them about the social and multiplayer aspect of cRPG.
Exactly the same thing as Brian Fargo.
But considering SINGLE player cRPG i thinkk they are wrong.
Horrible this idea of sharing maps and general knowledge about things like "how have you discover this weapon".
The last thing i want in a single player cRPG is someone spoiling my fun because the better aspect of cRPG is discovering things.
Even if i have 0 interest in replaying the game i would not look at this kind of info while playing the game.
The only amazing social/online aspect of single cRPG is mod.
MMO are another story but although a different product.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Is there a hentai of this? The story would be more interesting than watching those two fuckwads talk about shit.

 

[Jaesun]

My gawd I've only seen 5 minutes so far and I am about to vomit. Oh my gawd, no wonder BioWare went to fucking hell.

Feargus comes across as someone who ACTUALLY plays cRPG's and Ray just keeps vomiting Market Speak and is selling a product. But doesn't give a shit about the product as long as it hit's all of the Marketing Demands.

 

[Dexter]

But goddamn Muzyka, do a lobotomy already, would you? It won't be any worse, I'm sure.

Listening to that guy talk, I think he's already had a mandatory lobotomy while working at EA, he manages to say nothing of worth and tourettes buzzwords like "Free2Play", mobile, casual, social, engagement, DLC, monetization, virality, achievement, business models, value, analytics, telemetry, "software as a service", etc. constantly, he even uses designations like "creative types" that seem to be below his awesomeness and enlightenment in the chain of making games. What an utter cunt.

My understanding of it was that Feargus was saying that very few people play an RPG a second time(he was asking the question in a rhetorical way) and Muzyka was supporting his statement by saying that the telemetry they have agrees with that. I never got the impression that Feargus was trying to talk down the value of telemetry. I also never got the impression that Muzyka was saying it is the end all be all. He was just saying that it was another tool that had recently become available and it was proving itself to be useful.

Edit: Just re-watched that part again. Feargus was indeed claryfying that there should be some caution taken when using telemetry. I still think it is reading into what Muzyka said to say that he was saying that analyzing telemetry is the end all be all.

Nope bro, that's exactly how I took it. BioWare in its later years was all like "only X% of the players played more than one Origin story in Dragon Age: Origins, therefore Origins are worthless and a waste of money": http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/5821847 or "Soldier was the most popular class with 65%+ of people playing, therefor we will mutate all the other classes into soldier archetypes with a few of their own abilities" and shit like that. Even worse, instead of trying to fix something that might be broken, they often remove that component entirely and introduce something else that is broken.

Muzyka even said that their development process is more dependent on "telemetry" nowadays. While Feargus was trying to counter that you CAN'T TELL SHIT by just blindly following these stats. For instance maybe all the little Volourns out there only bought Dragon Age: Origins cuz they could play as a retarded dwarf and just didn't have any interest in any of the other features. Or people did that but Offline, or they appreciated the choice a lot but just went with the one they liked most, or planned to return to the game later, sometimes multiple people play the same game etc. etc. The problem with that is that you can see the statistics, but might very often come to an entirely false conclusion, since you interpret them wrong not knowing the intention behind them or how much weight the people that did like it put behind that one feature.

 

[xemous]

i find some of obsidians games ordinary

 

[Duraframe300]

Heh, to be fair, Feargus seemed fairly excited about the multiplayer/social stuff as well.

Well, actually I'm sure Obsidian is excited about that, but in a different way than Myzuka. Mainly in terms of actual possiblities and not the shitty way its used today.

I think Avellone? said 1-3 years ago that they would like to make an MMO sometime, but that theres no publisher who would actually allow them to make it the way they want, instead just getting them to copy WOW. That's why they're not going to do one and are negative towards building in multiplayer.

 

[RK47]

obsidian and all it's games are shit. mca and his followers are boring and so is planescape torment. bioware made good rpgs. obsidians 4,000,000 $$ swindle was based on infinity engine nostalgia, a bioware product. obsidians signature move: take credit for other peoples work, pretend u know what you're doing and when you're exposed blame the publisher.

 

[tuluse]

I only played a human in DA:O. If the game had been better I would have played more though.

I played BG2 with at least 4 different races (by played I meant at least 30 hours in).

 

[Morgoth]

Oldfags never really leave an industry, they'll just talk shit now instead of doing shit.

 

[villain of the story]

Heh, to be fair, Feargus seemed fairly excited about the multiplayer/social stuff as well.

Well, actually I'm sure Obsidian is excited about that, but in a different way than Myzuka. Mainly in terms of actual possiblities and not the shitty way its used today.

I think Avellone? said 1-3 years ago that they would like to make an MMO sometime, but that theres no publisher who would actually allow them to make it the way they want, instead just getting them to copy WOW. That's why they're not going to do one and are negative towards building in multiplayer.

An Obsidian MMO would most likely mean the end of Obsidian, though. They are barely scraping by.