The worst thing in the gaming world is a game's main message board. It can also be the best. You can sort of track it like this:
Game is in 2 or 3 years out (generally when the PC mags have the MOST to say about the game): Message board becomes a happy, hopeful community consisting of 30 or so regulars. Sometimes they fall in love.
Game is 1 month out: This is the climax. Hundreds of excited would be players "fanbois" fill the site, preaching the wonders to be seen. Every thread is about nothing, and no one can get enough.
1 week out: A madness fills the message board. People are delirious for the game. Its like Christmas morning except you're 30 and a topless Cordelia from Angel is sitting under the tree.
Release: well, you know, people start announcing they got it, and in what city, and the Canadians are complaining about the Canadian peso being about .0002 to the dollar.
AND THEN IT HAPPENS. POST RELEASE. God, I hate this part. The anti-fanbois runs amok. Maybe they hate the game, maybe they just want attention. Maybe they can't get it to run, and the tech forum is too boring. Here are some long threads currently on Bioware's NWN board:
Please god Make a patch or something for this moronic 45 degree view!( 1, 2, 3, ... , 25 )
Camera Angle is Awful - Please Change!
Resting makes the game too easy( 1, 2 )
Henchmen #1 problem with game?( 1, 2, 3, ... , 6 )
Really bad interface design? When will you finally fix it???( 1, 2, 3, ... , 5 )
This game will be dead in a month..( 1, 2, 3, ... , 12 )
What bugs me the most is that these are the longest posts on the board. And its all crap!
Here is a very nasty face: :evil:
You should have seen the MW boards after release (a game i like alot!)... stuff such as 'MW too easy!' or 'my problems with MW' or 'why i hate MW' or 'MW crashes alot' or 'WTS MW for NWN'... its all the same. It's good theres alot of traffic, at least.
etc
And that's all that really matters... isn't it?Originally Posted by mtkafka
As Oscar Wilde said: "There's only one thing worse than being talked about... and that's not being talked about."
Ah, that's the way it is, isn't it? Just can't please people, and the wheels that squeak the loudest, and all...
It really ticks me off seeing all those people griping so much about NWN, though. I think it's just an absolutely great game!!
Did anyone else see this post on fatbabies?
http://www.fatbabies.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=335
Now that is a crazed fan. Just a little bit (it is very,very long)
I think this man's use of "and more" is a little redundant.I have a suggestion for a Civilization style game. It would combine the genres of strategy, wargame, action, adventure, simulation, interactive movie and role playing. How about a more complex tech-tree, more units wonders and more. How about a multiple storylines that are different for each of the major civilizations.
Techology levels would cover the 8000 B. C. - 2100 A.D. Summerian/Egyptian/Greek periods, Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Dark Ages, Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, Medieval Europe and Japan, Renaissance, Reformation, Elizabethian era, Spanish Empire, Inca and Aztec Empires, Jacobite era, Barque era, Age of Discovery, Enlightenment era, Industrial Revolution, Napoleonic era, Romantic era, Victorian era, Edwardian era, American Civil War era, Old West era, British Empire era, World War 1 era, World War 11 era, Korean War era, Vietnam War era, Cold War era, Gulf War era, Futuristic Space era and more. Which would make it more Civ 2 and Age of Empires with all the units. You can have a Ancient Egyptian palace, Roman palace, Byzantine palace, Japanese/Chinese palace, Aztec/Inca palace, Medieval palace, Turkish palace, Renaissance palace, Baroque palace, Enlightenment palace, Napoleonic palace, Czarist palace and much more.You can choose if you want to be a god or mortal. If you are a mortal you have only a limited time period to rule and you can be killed. If you are a god you can live forever and have god like powers like creating disasters, plagues, destroying non believers and more.
Chet
Ah, the vocal minority. It cuts both ways. For every one person who speaks up, there are potentially hundreds who don't. Presumably, this is why (voting taxpayers) writing letters to a congressperson works. On the other hand, it's not certain if it works for games, since it isn't clear what the distribution of paying customers is.
Then there are the exceptional cases, like the Gone Gold boards where it's basically a perpetual free-for-all. ;)
- Alan
You guys ever have the misfortune of stumbling around in the gamefaqs.com message boards? You would not believe how many people ask what the system requirements are and if the game will run on their specific computer. It's hilarious, in a pathetic kind of way.
This is still happening on the IL2 Sturmovik message boards after 7 months. There are two types of people posting on them :
1. The Luftwhiners
2. Everyone Else
The Luftwhiners whinge about every new patch update. They whinge when they can't shoot down a Russian aircraft. They whinge when their BF-109 won't make coffee and shoot down five Russians at the same time.
A sample :
To OLEG.M Fw190 Performance
Late-War Russian Fighter Aircraft 'Absolutely Superior?'
Why doesn't IL2 look like this for me?
Cheating has been detected!
BF109 Fuel Contents Guage Whats happening here?
IL-2 not as good as CFS2
somethink stinks here ....
The worst WWII game EVER!
Absolutly NO MERCY given by AI ack ack
The Hawker Tempest is absolutely one of the best fighters of WWII
MY FAVORITE PLANE isnt UBER enough!
Damage is severely unreal, rear gunners fantastic
real gunnery, aint real enough in this game!
"Oleg's Ready Room" disgusts me
Really annoyed!!!!!
Finally!!! Undisputable proof of VVS bias
I’m proud to be a Luftwhiner!
Bye IL and Oleg for now , here is why please read Oleg
Who is saddest Il-2 pedant?
Proof that LA5 is too good
Vulching
These FMs are a joke ....period
Booo
If this is real, Battle of Britain should have been lost
Luftwafflers still looking it seems....
there must be some way to get rid of this retarded stutter
F.U.B.A.R
TORTURE!!!
Torpedo in Il-2, Still not Implemented Right
Damn hard to control plane with bomb
PAUSES!! NOT STUTTERS, BUT PAUSES!!!
La5FN just outclimbed my G6/AS... !?
Cockpit inaccuraces for 109E
Oleg, spelling mistake in cockpit of Me 109 E
You screwed with my trigger Oleg:(
I see heavy errors in the FM, am I crazy?
Reply to the Thread locking Fan Boys....
what is bad in IL2??!! (don't enter when happy with IL2)
Plz correct the rate of fire for german planes...
For crybabies that think Oleg advatages russian side...
Ban bad players
Oleg, Soviet a/c are ridiculusly overmodelled in the vertical
Oleg: A small essay on gun calibre and Damage Models
Wrong numbers in IL2 FM
Oleg How to Help Your Game Look Better
FW-190 is not accelarating fast and this is why
OLEG IS NOT HERE
You missed the scary thread in which some of the posters knew the exact paint name used on one of the plane's instrument panel and were complaining that the game wasn't using it...
This is not a new phenomenon. Passionate gamers sometimes make for weird message boards.
Check out:
http://www.gamedesigner.net/news.phtml?id=16
I can attest to Mr. Creepy Pants, <g>.
Oh god yes - that would have been the ME-262 cockpit. :roll:
Sorry Rob, I didn't really pay attention to anything you said after that.
"Sorry Rob, I didn't really pay attention to anything you said after that."
And to think that for some lucky mofo out there, that is a reality.
Hey, lets try the Brian Reynolds trick:
Charisma Carpenter, Charisma Carpenter, Charisma Carpenter!
Cut it out.
Has anybody seen this before? It was linked to in that Gamedesigner.net article about Mr Creepy Pants
http://www.geekissues.org/quotes/?top
Mental, absolutely mental.
Samples...
<weDge> So I had a girlfriend for all of 9 months. She dropped by one afternoon when I was sick with a pan of brownies and a video tape with the simpsons on it (my favorite show). so I start eating the brownies and turn on the tape. midway through it, it cuts to her sucking off some dude. he nuts in her mouth, she looks at the camera, and says "you're dumped. enjoy the brownies" - and spits the mouthful of cum into a bowl of brownie mix. fucked up huh? I want to die.
<+kritical> christin: you need to learn how to figure out stuff yourself..
<+Christin1> how do i do that
<Kazz> Do vampires have anuses? Cause that's why I wouldn't let this kid invade a vampire's anus in this RPG, right, I was GMing, and his character was an Anus Shade, with the power to possess and control the anuses of people and animals.. and I figured that vampires don't have anuses.
<Zaratustra> a vampire's anus is present, but non-working.
<Zaratustra> like a network card without the appropriate driver.
<Kazz> Wow. You're the biggest dork on Earth.
<Sharkey> And you're DMing an rpg with Anus Shades.
<tatclass> YOU ALL SUCK DICK
<tatclass> er.
<tatclass> hi.
<andy\code> A common typo.
<tatclass> the keys are like right next to each other.
serluny: how long did it took u to learn c?
ReDPriest:4.5 minutes
serluny:how did u do that?
ReDPriest:i downloaded it into my brain..i got a program to do
that
serluny:what program
ReDPriest:download shit into your brain v3.1
serluny:how do i download it?
ReDPriest: go to www.downloadable-shit-for-your-brain.com
serluny:i cant download it something is wrong
<psychicbug> ok, take the bible in a .txt document and open it in notepad. shift every first letter to the right 1, and save it as an .avi. turns out, its a cumshot vid
Those are some great ones. This was my favorite for around here:
<Polytope> tetris is so unrealistic
I've come to the opinion that the inevitable trend for all online communities is dissolution and strife. The fact is, the core community demands an infinite amount of attention and participation from the company and designers making the games they like.
It doesn't matter how much time you give these (mostly) guys. You could dedicate someone on your dev team to spend their entire day all week to answering message board posts and emails and it still wouldn't be enough. You would still get posts from people saying that their ideas didn't get implemented, that they could have done it better, or that the designers didn't listen.
And this is because the vast majority of people who spend time posting on your average fansite message board are idiots. These are kids who think that they know how to design games!
And of course they are completely unencumbered by the reality of creating a game. They don't know what it's like to face a decision to run late and incur and extra cost of $500,000 to get that cool new feature in that .01% of your buyers will use (though it seems like more because that's ALL the community is talking about).
In the end I think the key is to build a game that can foster a community, but to not participate in it at all. It's an extremely slippery slope when you start posting on message boards.
I've often said the designers should make the game they want to create and not spend the time looking for input from the "community". It's the team's game (and the publisher's of course) so they should know where they want to go. It's ok to solicit feedback through an e-mail address where you're already making it one step harder for the messageboard flunky because he's got to compose something reasonable or have it ignored. You're also not compelled to reply to those e-mails. You're just taking suggestions.
Back in the days of no boards, wasn't this the only thing you could go on? You had to build your sequel based on some feedback via snail mail but that's about where it ended. People always claim games were more diverse back then and some days I'm inclined to agree and I think the "community participation" along with the greater perceived market demand for look-alike games is largely responsible for this trend toward homogenized gaming. (Before anyone goes off on how X game is "different", I'm well aware that there's some great original ideas out there. I point them out when I can myself)
Anyway, developers should make the game they want to make and hopefully they'll have commercial success. This is how you get the next Half-Life, not by spending a bunch of time reading the message boards and arguing with nutcases like us. We'll provide feedback via that e-mail address I mentioned above. :D
--Dave
About the comment that designers should make the games that they want, I have to say yes and no. I've definitely seen games where the designer went overboard and engineered all of the gameplay out. This usually involves weird puzzles and insta-death booby-traps, broken scripts, and the like.
- Alan
Yes Alan, that can happen, but as Adam points out, you won't necessarily gain anything by taking the opinion of a bunch of armchair designers sitting in front of a PC all day reading messageboards either.
Personally, I'd rather trust the developers to make the decisions and come up with the ideas. I'd hope that if I was building a game, my publisher would have enough confidence in my abilities to let me design it rather than having me get a committee of gamers to help out via a messageboard.
That might go a bit away from what Adam's talking about though. I think he's entirely right that spending too much time arguing and fighting with gamers on a game's messageboard is detrimental to the process. Too many cooks and all that...
Some of the best loved games of all time were done by very small teams down to like one guy. Look at Rollercoaster Tycoon. Sheer genius and it came from basically one guy. You can't do much of that today with the reality of technology and the time it takes to create these huge productions, but you can surely benefit from having one or two guys with their hand firmly on the rudder and the rest of the team filling in the blanks (art, programming the systems, etc.).
--Dave
Weren't people saying "You can't do that today" When Rollercoaster Tycoon came out? I think Jeff Vogel would argue that you can still make games by yourself and be successful. Does he have a Ferrari? Probably not, but I bet he is comfortable with Spiderweb, and he makes great games, without all the glitz. Counterstrike wasn't a huge team either. Maybe, with all the gaming geeks, erm, gurus on this message board, we could put together a team of 10 people, all willing to work for profit shares, chip in and buy the Lithtech engine (or some other cheaper engine) and make a game.
Personally, I am of the camp that says that developers can do what they want, they just have to suffer (or enjoy) the consequences. They put up the money, along with the publisher. They put in the time. If it isn't a good game, don't buy it. You can wait for the review, decide if they did things in a way that you like, and base your decision on that. Developers don't owe us anything. We don't pay them until after they are finished, so the only reason to please us is to get our money. That's important, of course, but if you listen to the public too much you get Daikatana. Actually, no one asked for that :?
Our experience as a "very small team down to like one guy" (and why I won't put a message board on my site):
As Sturgeon's Law defines, 90 percent of the suggestions/ideas you get are ...either technically unfeasible or just one person's fixation that doesn't fit with our vision in the least ("I loved Outpost/Leather Goddesses of Phobos/Falcon 4. Can you make the interface exactly like that"? "You need to put a giant meatball in the game." "Can the 52-Foot Woman wear red high heels?"). Many ideas are already in our plan. Not that we don't listen or take suggestions -- we do, but I can't spend a lot of time on it, certainly not moderating a board. We have too many things on our own wish list. I won't even get into the legal issues involved in handling other people's ideas (which is why many game companies don't accept them at all).
Oops, I forgot the whole second half of my post back there, the bit where I mention that the designer's core gameplay concept needs to stay consistent during development. I agree that a designer is under absolutely no obligation to cater to anyone else's idea of what might be fun or worth including. At the same time, the designer needs to be aware that people will attempt to "play" this game and not just gape at it from afar. Caveat, uh, designor or something. (Boy, my Latin sucks!)
- Alan
No, it's gonads and strife.I've come to the opinion that the inevitable trend for all online communities is dissolution and strife.
If you really make your interface a perfect amalgam of Outpost, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and Falcon 4, I promise that I'd buy 100 copies of your game. Really.
Please god make a patch that makes the game run. Please, god, do it. Otherwise, you'll forever be cursed as the company who makes games that simply play rock-paper-scissor to decide if they'll run on the machine or not. (i.e. GTA3)
How about fixing the installer/uninstaller so it doesn't delete system files from your hard drive? :roll:
- Alan
Funny, I don't have any problems with GTA3 on my PS2 ;).
No problems, that is, except for the incredibly slow framerate, the near-60-second load times, and the pixellated 320x200 resolution. And the awful on-foot controls.
But you're right, at least it runs.
You are wrong wumpus. PS/2 games do not run at 320x200 resolution. Try loading up a PS1 game with none of the extra filtering from the PS2 to see what 320x200 looks like. It is at least some form of 640x480 or interlaced 640x240 or something but it is not 320x200.
-- Xaroc
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