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NSFW Best Thread Ever [No SJW-related posts allowed]

Declinator

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 1, 2013
Messages
542
"they get to choose what contract they sign"

newsflash, you retarded metalhead, you either sign the fucking contract or you lay off people, or worse, close the studio.

There would have been more and better contract offers if their past products had been successful enough. If they "had to" accept the contract it was ultimately their own fault. Obsidian is not entitled to good contracts and Bethesda is not obligated to offer them either.

Possibly, but given that Bioware couldn't get a decent timeframe for DA2 from their EA owners, I wouldn't bet on it. Good crpgs aren't exactly big money these days - if anything there seems to be an inverse relationship. Moreover, game publishing is an oligopoly - the publisher has a massive number of alternate developers they can work with instead (again, all the publisher cares about is the $$$), whereas the developer only has a handful of publishers to choose from. For a crpg there might literally be no other publisher that's interested in that kind of game....and there's NO publishers that are interested in 'good' crpgs by Codex standards.

And even if none of that was the case, the publishers have an incentive not to weaken their bargaining position with other developers by offering better or more flexible contracts. With a choice between blowing off Obsidian and making just as much money (or more) by funding a different game, or giving them a better contract and not only paying more in this particular case but also encouraging other developers to get uppity, why would they choose the latter?

There would be a reason if Obsidian had been more successful in the past. By success, I mean monetary success in this case if that was not clear before. If that had been the case, i.e. if Kotor 2 had brough in twice or thrice the money Kotor 1 did, then yes, publishers might just try to offer better contracts to Obsidian so that they would make games for them instead of the other publishers. A developer will have to make themselves tempting enough that the cheaper alternative developers are not good enough (do not make enough money) for the publishers. Even If there is only one publisher offering a deal a successful developer can still negotiate for a better contract because the publisher knows that they make more money for them. Of course if there are many desperate, roughly equal developers (money-wise), the supposed sole publisher can just pick out the most desperate and feed it scraps. There is no blackmail there, contrary to how some here see it.

If the developer is incapable of being sufficiently successful then trash contracts, layoffs and/or the company going down are your options and there is nothing wrong with that. In the CRPG business it may be very difficult to be that successful but that changes absolutely nothing.
 

Siel

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 25, 2013
Messages
885
Location
Some refined shithole
Not sure if right thread.

bIUheuu.jpg
 

MicoSelva

backlog digger
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Joined
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Vigil's Keep
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Divinity: Original Sin 2 Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Razorfist calls out on Obsidian fanboys in the Codex (at 5:40):



He does have a point. Signing a contract or agreeing on a deadline and then failing to deliver/bitching about it is quite silly.

I wonder why he censored LeStryfe79 's name...

On the one hand I would like to watch this to see the Codex reference, on the other hand... Razorfist. Tough call.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
6,207
Location
The island of misfit mascots
"they get to choose what contract they sign"

newsflash, you retarded metalhead, you either sign the fucking contract or you lay off people, or worse, close the studio.

There would have been more and better contract offers if their past products had been successful enough. If they "had to" accept the contract it was ultimately their own fault. Obsidian is not entitled to good contracts and Bethesda is not obligated to offer them either.

Possibly, but given that Bioware couldn't get a decent timeframe for DA2 from their EA owners, I wouldn't bet on it. Good crpgs aren't exactly big money these days - if anything there seems to be an inverse relationship. Moreover, game publishing is an oligopoly - the publisher has a massive number of alternate developers they can work with instead (again, all the publisher cares about is the $$$), whereas the developer only has a handful of publishers to choose from. For a crpg there might literally be no other publisher that's interested in that kind of game....and there's NO publishers that are interested in 'good' crpgs by Codex standards.

And even if none of that was the case, the publishers have an incentive not to weaken their bargaining position with other developers by offering better or more flexible contracts. With a choice between blowing off Obsidian and making just as much money (or more) by funding a different game, or giving them a better contract and not only paying more in this particular case but also encouraging other developers to get uppity, why would they choose the latter?

There would be a reason if Obsidian had been more successful in the past. By success, I mean monetary success in this case if that was not clear before. If that had been the case, i.e. if Kotor 2 had brough in twice or thrice the money Kotor 1 did, then yes, publishers might just try to offer better contracts to Obsidian so that they would make games for them instead of the other publishers. A developer will have to make themselves tempting enough that the cheaper alternative developers are not good enough (do not make enough money) for the publishers. Even If there is only one publisher offering a deal a successful developer can still negotiate for a better contract because the publisher knows that they make more money for them. Of course if there are many desperate, roughly equal developers (money-wise), the supposed sole publisher can just pick out the most desperate and feed it scraps. There is no blackmail there, contrary to how some here see it.

If the developer is incapable of being sufficiently successful then trash contracts, layoffs and/or the company going down are your options and there is nothing wrong with that. In the CRPG business it may be very difficult to be that successful but that changes absolutely nothing.

Greater sales would have helped (though with party-based crpgs this often comes at the cost of gameplay - not so much with hybrids, as TES/ME are quite inefficient in their mechanics; Deus Ex has more 'meaningful' interaction despite far simpler mechanics). But I don't think it would have been enough, even if their games sold through the roof.

Publishers seem to be quite contemptuous of developers, even successful ones. With good reason - the market follows IPs, not developers. Similarly, when a publisher buys a developer, they do it to get the IPs - it isn't buying the staff, as the creative talent can come and go, and while the previous owners are hired on non-compete clauses they're mostly just doubling up on the executive expertise that the publisher already has. Look at the way that the publishers treated the Battlefield and CoD developers - they couldn't give a shit about retaining the developer, because they own the IPs and that's what they expect the market to follow.

Now that might not be so strongly the case with crpgs, as I suspect that there's a greater proportion of 'informed customers' in this market. Not enough to tip the scales towards developers instead of IPs though - most people who bought KoTOR2 probably didn't even realise that it wasn't made by the same people as KoTOR1. And the publishers don't understand crpgs anyway, so I wouldn't expect them to even take that into account (a healthy and competitive industry would have detailed research into the minutia of this, but game publishing is an industry where companies like EA manage to lose money despite being part of a fricken oligopoly!).

For Obsidian to get a better contract, they'd need better sales AND ownership of the IP. Actually scrap that - they'd just need ownership of the IP. Even with mediocre sales (not indie-level mediocre, but less than what they've had to date), IP-ownership would still give them a more powerful bargaining position as they wouldn't be so easily replaceable; the publisher could only target fans of the IP by hiring Obsidian, intsead of just getting another developer to make a game using that IP instead.

IP ownership, rather than game sales, are the biggest reason why Kickstarter is a godsend for developers of Obsidian's size. Normally it's a self-perpetuating impossibility - publishers demand the IP ownership, which means that the developers never have the bargaining power required to keep their IPs. For indie developers this doesn't mean a lot, but those working just outside the AAA markets are able to sell enough copies that they can use kickstarter to create an IP with significant commercial value, even if the game itself doesn't sell a lot outside the backers.

There's a lot of things about Kickstarter that I really don't like, but it's a good step towards a competitive, mature, market, just by breaking the stranglehold that the publishers have over the IPs. If more developers owned their IPs, it would be a lot easier to bypass publishers altogether. Developers will always need outside funding, but if they own their own IP, banks will eventually ask themselves why they aren't cutting out the middleman and lending $$$ straight to the developer.
 
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Hoaxmetal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 19, 2009
Messages
9,157
Last few videos of Angry Joe I've seen (like teso one) aren't that bad, he seems to have toned down his retarded persona.
 
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
1,875,975
Location
Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
Yeah. The TESO videos in particular are pretty good, mixing information and some anecdotes (such as how he died during a siege and on the way back he met a guy hiding under a tree on the wilderness, getting his first duel kill after nearly being killed himself).
 

CSM

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Dec 12, 2009
Messages
459
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
At least Angry Joe can be sympathetic when he stops trying so hard. But that Razorfist dude, ugh.
 

sexbad?

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
2,812
Location
sexbad
Codex USB, 2014
9:48 PM - Circumsoldier: have you heard news?
9:57 PM - sexbad: no
9:57 PM - sexbad: wasa
9:57 PM - Circumsoldier: broteam hate jews this massge prove it http://i.imgur.com/SU1r08T.jpg
SU1r08T.jpg

9:58 PM - sexbad: damn, i cant trust him anymore
9:58 PM - Circumsoldier: he will steal your mouth
 

xilo3z

Educated
Joined
Apr 17, 2012
Messages
80
Nah, Angry Joe is clearly an act. "Spoony" has mentioned him in his videos numerous times, they play PnP, boardgames together and other gaming stuff, and the anecdotes of "ANGRY JOE!!!" are anything but like his act. In fact it is obvious the Angry Joe part is to appear to casual gamers as much as humanly possible. I mean he mentions in numerous videos (when talking about slow starting games) stuff like "You come home from work, you grab a beer and you want FUNNN! Not any of this boring shit! Some action baby! FUCK YEAAHHH!!".... Yet he is in like 200000 D&D, Thieves World, and Pathfinder campaigns with Spoony or other people at their local rpg group/game store. Does not compute. He's still a tool, but like a 7.5 on the tool scale rather than 10/10.
 

MicoSelva

backlog digger
Patron
Joined
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Messages
7,480
Location
Vigil's Keep
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Divinity: Original Sin 2 Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Nah, Angry Joe is clearly an act. "Spoony" has mentioned him in his videos numerous times, they play PnP, boardgames together and other gaming stuff, and the anecdotes of "ANGRY JOE!!!" are anything but like his act. In fact it is obvious the Angry Joe part is to appear to casual gamers as much as humanly possible. I mean he mentions in numerous videos (when talking about slow starting games) stuff like "You come home from work, you grab a beer and you want FUNNN! Not any of this boring shit! Some action baby! FUCK YEAAHHH!!".... Yet he is in like 200000 D&D, Thieves World, and Pathfinder campaigns with Spoony or other people at their local rpg group/game store. Does not compute. He's still a tool, but like a 7.5 on the tool scale rather than 10/10.
Yeah, except I've seen videos of him playing multiplayer Blood Bowl or Mechwarrior Online, not doing his 'act' and he was as obnoxious as ever, if not more.
 

Grim Monk

Arcane
Joined
Nov 7, 2011
Messages
1,217
'Dark Souls II' Was 'Unplayable And Broken' On Consoles Before Graphics Downgrade
..............................

I’ve spoken with a source close to the development of the game who was willing to go into greater depth on what they believe happened between the preview builds and the final product—a product which would have apparently played like the notoriously mangled Blighttown without a graphics downgrade.

According to my source:

“This is what it comes down to: a playable framerate. The early builds that the screenshots came from were playable but only just so. The game was not in a state where it could be sold at that point. I strongly suspect that they were focusing heavily on delivering a top-notch experience on PC and underestimated the challenges the new systems would pose on PS3 / Xbox360. That’s my analysis, anyway. But, factually, the early builds played like Blighttown the entire game.

“I sincerely don’t think they intended to deceive, but in the end they sacrificed a huge amount of graphical fidelity at the very end of development because they couldn’t resolve the framerate in any other way. They had to promote the game with screens and trailers, but at that time even they had no idea they were going to have to drop the settings so much, I suspect.

“I want people to know the truth. I know a lot of people just feel lied to, but I think the reality is a bit different. It doesn’t mean they handled it properly, but I think they made the only decision they COULD make in the end. The game would have been much worse without the change (as in, many would call it unplayable and broken.)”


It’s no surprise that performance issues were the root cause of the downgrade—though it is puzzling that a decision wasn’t made until the very end of development.

On the other hand, this may be good news for PC gamers. If From Software was so focused on making a great, visually stunning experience on PC, then it’s quite possible that the PC version will look and play the way the game looked and played in preview builds.
Forbes Link:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...broken-on-consoles-before-graphics-downgrade/


I know its wrong to be happy at the misfortune of others, but...
:smug::martini::smug:
 

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
Good thing that with these monstrous new hardware capabilities that easily rival the most midrange of PCs, the developers can finally throw down the oppressive yoke of optimization needs.

Oh, right, no.
 

BlackAdderBG

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 24, 2012
Messages
3,046
Location
Little Vienna
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker
For console plebs optimization means more smaller,but prettier corridors if we judge for last 10 years.
 

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