RPG developer's response to the Codex

[sgc_meltdown]

Romances: When we announced there would be romances in BG2 there was outcry against it on our boards. But the reason we put them in was because people were inventing their own. In BG1 it was enough that we simply didn’t contradict it. Players read into all sorts of interactions, scripting or not, and they were eager to believe that relationships were developing. So we knew the appetite was there.

I really don't remember this as being part of the old anti BG argument set. Would have been nice to have back then for the old guard.

 

[Wunderpurps]

Roguey you are right. Nasty alts and trolls ruined gaming. If we could all play nice we'd go back to 2.5D turn based combat with parties instead of first person romance simulators.

 

[Roguey]

Way to completely misunderstand and misrepresent what I was even saying.

 

[Captain Shrek]

snip

I never asked anybody NOT to enjoy stuff even shitty things. Where have i said that playing oblivion gives someone s FALSE sense of enjoyment if he claims that it was fun?

I only object calling it a GOOD game against the available choices of OTHER good games. And don't give that 'My honest opinion' argument. I can't contradict an OPINION. Only facts can be countered; Opinions, only argued.

As for Spielberg, yes, I did feel bad that AI, Minority report etc were bad movies. I might enjoy watching his movies but when I put a label on them I try to think what I am doing first.

This allows me to divert the discussions to regions somewhat unrelated to our current ... issues. So if you feel bored stop reading and don't comment.

I can understand the problems with modern art forms like Movies: It takes time for their critical appreciation to mature. The same is even damningly true of video games, a very very young device of expression. The point of developing critical approach to weed out all the faulty conceptions of quality (as opposed to individual enjoyment and matters of taste (!)) is that much more necessary due to its youth. RPG codex may not be mainstream (actually, it is, because of the nature of the internet) but it still one of the few places where people really consider games like Thief, DX, Master of Orion, Alpha centauri, Fallout 1 as their favorite games COLLECTIVELY in the same breath. They talk fondly about TB combat and await games like AOD with wistfulness. This automatically makes the 'dex a bastion of good games. Now this feels like I am giving the prestigious magazine a bit too much credit, but it deserves it at least in my eyes. I would have this place hold very stringent criteria if I were the king. Not because I want it to be some kind of quirky clique (read circle jerk), but because that's the only way of exploring good things about video games.

Now Vidya is not Serious business, you might say, to warrant such a passion. But that's exactly it. Its a hobby and in the dear sense of that word. I can't let my personal hobbies go to complete doom without making some noise. And here's where I choose to make it.

Captain Shrek Out.

 

[Wunderpurps]

Way to completely misunderstand and misrepresent what I was even saying.

I posted on most of those forums at some point. I never got banned or even warned but any time you mention turned based or features like quest compass you'd get 20 guys jumping your cock arguing in a very rude manner. Much like how you ironically get a knee jerk reaction from dipshits here calling you a trolling alt asshole the second you post something they disagree with, while thinking they are the keepers of the light or something.

If someone argues back in the manner they get harassed, ban. If they don't, it gets called a troll or marked as a duplicate thread and locked.

 

[Radisshu]

. And a significant number of BioWare forum posters have posted regularly here, such as Radisshu. The idea that the two are polar opposites is some blatant caricature and stereotyping.

I actually left the Bioware forums not very long after I joined the Codex though

 

[20 Eyes]

Yeah, because removing mandatory hand-holding bullshit isn't a substantial change and it's not the kind of thing that the codex spends 95% of its time (true statistic) bitching about.

But I guess it's easier to just reply with a hivemind-solidifying meme.

Making part of the UI optional is a bold design move? That's what substantial means for you? Allowing players to turn off a self-contained component is not restructuring. Putting how easily impressed you are aside, how about you think about the trivial work needed for that implementation versus large scale design document changes that reflect the kind of developer feedback and work resource commitment I'm talking about and get back to me.

I have zero game development and minimal project management experience, so I'm not going to argue about how difficult this adjustment was. I know from reading interviews with these guys that seemingly minor changes are sometimes much more difficult. I don't know if they just had to check a box somewhere or if they spent a week fucking with the engine and redoing various code/art to accommodate for the change.

But if I'm 'easily impressed' by a AAA game team REMOVING mandatory hand-holding features, then I guess I'm easily impressed. Usually it's the other way around, so even a small step in the right direction is impressive to me. The highlighting would change the game for the worse, and it goes beyond the UI because instead of looking around for items/shortcuts you'd just run from yellow highlight to yellow highlight. It certainly qualifies as a 'significant change'. If they left it mandatory, I can only imagine how many Codex posts mocking/bitching about it I'd have read by now.

They didn't make it optional because they were nice, they did so because it was an easy compromise that in no way would require touching the actual underlying framework of a game, like a numbers balance tweak in an mmo for people screaming that a class in their F2P korean mmo is broken.

Does anyone do anything in this industry because it's 'nice'? Realizing that a feature is going to piss off a sizable portion of your customers and making it optional to appease them is just the logical thing to do, in some cases. The MMO cycle of class balance is an interesting thing in itself, but Minimum effort -> Maximum profit is the driving force behind the entire gaming industry.

As stinger said, it took fan outrage to make that easy tweak.

If you bothered to read the posts you reply to, you'd realize I said this in my very first post in this thread.

What would it take for them to make bigger changes? You see where the feedback line ends here?

I don't know. Indie game developers and even smaller studios can have good feedback with the players. But what do you think would justify a AAA game readjusting their budget and deadlines to the extent that you seem to be desiring? It's easier to say 'this would be nicer if it was more fleshed out' than it is to actually do it. As for more fundamental changes that you and I and other people on the Codex are clamoring for, as I'm sure you know the big companies see us as a small dying breed of consumer and I doubt this is going to change any time soon. We're not worth catering to in their eyes. I disagree with this, but that is how it is.

Do you think making a toggle to turn off the quest compass for Oblivion would have impressed anyone here and make them think, oh, Bethesda cares about the game they're making and just won back the Morrowind fanbase?

Oblivion would still be shit because it's shit on every level, but it would be a change in the right direction. If they put some sort of control on level scaling, which from my vast game developing experience I can assume would be an effortless change taking less than an afternoon's worth of work, they'd have eliminated two of the biggest things I see people bitching about around here.

Perhaps you think the upcoming Hitman: Absolution goes out of their way to cater to old fans in the sense that they say they're turning off the radar vision for higher difficulties?

No idea, I'm not a Hitman fan.

See, when you make something modular the dilemma of having the game work for people with it on or off still remains. So instead of designing a game securely around an excellent principle (no health regen, say), you end up with a bland half-here and there mess that sort of keeps you awake with either health regen on or off because you have to average out the baseline challenge for either camp and keep the specialist features out.

I agree with this, for the most part.

Therefore, do you think they added environmental clues or subtle hints along with turning off the highlighting for the people who did, and make arriving at these objectives more satisfying?

Probably not. If I recall correctly the change was made a few months or so before release and I doubt they'd have the time to readjust the entire game. I'm admittedly not very far in the new Deus Ex because I just started playing it recently, however I'm not having any problems without the yellow highlight. In this specific case, I don't think too much additional work was absolutely needed because there is still a quest compass of sorts guiding your overall direction. The descriptions of where shit is located seem pretty decent so far, but I'll get back to you when I finish the game.

But sure, it would have been smoother if it had been part of the game's initial framework.

Save the glib defensive backpeddling and follow your own advice about thinking before replying just for the sole purpose of making your little revelation stick. Easy enough for you?

Yes.

 

[Wunderpurps]

No no no, guys, like I said before we just have to ask nicely. The changes they made aren't for real reasons they are just arbitrary. Consolization and year long dev cycles have no impact on games, they just feel it's out of fashion to make games like they used to be. They won't mind spending 4 times as long to develop games, and won't think it's a waste of time to make games that won't play well with an xbox controller.

All we have to do is convince them it's fashionable again to make games like they were in the golden age. Everything comes around, right? They tell us all about the cycles of fashion in the articles they use to prep our minds for each round of decline, and they couldn't possibly be lying to us, and it couldn't be that the cycles and trends are just following real reasons because the magical moving hand of the market says otherwise.

Once the fashion comes back around it will be a whole new golden age, but first we all have to be good citizens and do our part to make ourselves heard. But not too loudly or we'll get banned or called trolls.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You've played Baldur's Gate 2. Do you really feel that there has been a drop in the quality of David Gaider's writing since then, or do you feel he was always the same - be that good or bad?

Anyway, let's remember that it was a total accident that Gaider eventually ended up developing videogames or writing narratives for them. His actual profession was something else, he saw the chance to make a game at some point of time, he took it, and that actually became a permanent part of his life. I don't think he believes himself to be some legendarily great writer; I think he actually knows he is just a man who entered gaming by accident, and stayed there because he enjoys it.

There is no indication that he ever wanted to be a writer before that, so I don't think he believes he is a Rowling.

Nah, not necessarily drop in the quality of writing - that has probably remained the same. But when Gaider started at Bioware, coming from the prestigious profession of hotel manager, he was nerd enough that he cared about a proper "conclusion" to the Bhaalspawn saga enough that he made Ascension on his free own. He took rational pride on his work and wasn't afraid of coming across as a nerd. He even wrote on the readme.txt about the fights and apologised for not being able to make them challenging enough - sentiment which was promptly dismissed by the pre-SHS/G3 modding community as Ascension was hard as fuck. Sure, the romances were there but they were fairly unobtrusive and you could end them easily enough and rest of the writing in BG2/ToB was good for what it is, in the sense that it was tongue-in-cheek D&D Forgotten Realms.

Now compare that Gaider to the current one, who got a toupee (look, I'm not a bald nerd), has gushing fangirls happily guzzling up his literary productions and has even managed to put out a booklet or two. He gets almost constant praise from BioSocial and the only criticism he managed to take on board was that tranny complaining about a tranny joke in DAO. Every other critique on either characters or plot or writing in general is dismissed by the "well, obviously this game isn't for you and if you weren't so stupid, you'd realize it yourself"-line. But that's allrighty since people write fanfiction about his characters and send it off to him!

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

So, Gaider moved from being a passionate gamer to being a king of pathetic nerds?

 

[Azalin]

Nah, not necessarily drop in the quality of writing - that has probably remained the same. But when Gaider started at Bioware, coming from the prestigious profession of hotel manager, he was nerd enough that he cared about a proper "conclusion" to the Bhaalspawn saga enough that he made Ascension on his free own. He took rational pride on his work and wasn't afraid of coming across as a nerd. He even wrote on the readme.txt about the fights and apologised for not being able to make them challenging enough - sentiment which was promptly dismissed by the pre-SHS/G3 modding community as Ascension was hard as fuck. Sure, the romances were there but they were fairly unobtrusive and you could end them easily enough and rest of the writing in BG2/ToB was good for what it is, in the sense that it was tongue-in-cheek D&D Forgotten Realms.

Now compare that Gaider to the current one, who got a toupee (look, I'm not a bald nerd), has gushing fangirls happily guzzling up his literary productions and has even managed to put out a booklet or two. He gets almost constant praise from BioSocial and the only criticism he managed to take on board was that tranny complaining about a tranny joke in DAO. Every other critique on either characters or plot or writing in general is dismissed by the "well, obviously this game isn't for you and if you weren't so stupid, you'd realize it yourself"-line. But that's allrighty since people write fanfiction about his characters and send it off to him!

I miss the old fanboy/nerd Gaider

 

[Gregz]

Games aren't art anymore, they are mill-produced for the lowest common denominator. Intentionally.

This applies to anything and everything AAA.

The exception may be indie developers. Mount and Blade comes to mind. But even these developers want to break big. Look how much money Farmville or Bejeweled has made vs. M&B. If you want to make money you target the lowest common denominator.

That's why developers don't come here, they don't care about what anyone here has to say. We don't represent the market, we're a bunch of crotchety old historians.

 

[Black]

Games aren't art anymore

Oh, nooo, just kill me right now if we're going to have the "are video james art??" discussion.

 

[Gregz]

Games aren't art anymore

Oh, nooo, just kill me right now if we're going to have the "are video james art??" discussion.

Not to worry, if there was a debate the AAAs have silenced it.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Games aren't art anymore

Oh, nooo, just kill me right now if we're going to have the "are video james art??" discussion.

Not to worry, if there was a debate the AAAs have silenced it.

:/

 

[Darkflame]

Coding an RPG requires a high degree of passion. It's one of the most complicated types of software to create because the more freedom you allow the user the harder it gets to design and be prepared for all possible user actions and outcomes.

As a game developer myself I expect criticism but what really irks me is when people complain over false allegations or elements of the game they simply misunderstood due to their own insufficiencies and not because there was any actual problem with the game... and I see alot of that around here - many people hate on games because they deem it the "cool" thing to do rather than because they have any actual or valid critique. Mix that with developers who take their work personally and it's obvious why devs would take offense to this place, especially if/when their company doesn't let them respond to player complaints directly but leaves that to some community "spokesman" who isn't even a gamer and doesn't understand the critique to begin with.

Games are art, and there's good and bad art, but any artist who poured alot of time into making something is gonna tell you to shove a pipe up your ass and go sit on a volcano if you insult his work, it's just human nature.

 

[Johnny the Mule]

tldr, codex is shit, news at eleven, here is why

Questioning the decision of whether the sandwich experience was truly, objectively positive is even more out of the question. Really not enough of a philosopher to consider whether if I, in my frail mortal fallability, was making excuses for the sandwich.

onto different things:

Because the alternative is that this toupee wearing talentless fat ass actually believes himself to be the 2nd coming of JK.Rowling, only because the sad, depressed losers whose only activity before Dragon's Age was cyber-sex AOL chat rooms, keep sprouting false encouragement to him - and the poor fucker actually believes them. Which would be really, really sad.

hey Hey HEY NOW! Nothing against AOL chat room cybersex!

 

[Wyrmlord]

You've played Baldur's Gate 2. Do you really feel that there has been a drop in the quality of David Gaider's writing since then, or do you feel he was always the same - be that good or bad?

Anyway, let's remember that it was a total accident that Gaider eventually ended up developing videogames or writing narratives for them. His actual profession was something else, he saw the chance to make a game at some point of time, he took it, and that actually became a permanent part of his life. I don't think he believes himself to be some legendarily great writer; I think he actually knows he is just a man who entered gaming by accident, and stayed there because he enjoys it.

There is no indication that he ever wanted to be a writer before that, so I don't think he believes he is a Rowling.

Nah, not necessarily drop in the quality of writing - that has probably remained the same. But when Gaider started at Bioware, coming from the prestigious profession of hotel manager, he was nerd enough that he cared about a proper "conclusion" to the Bhaalspawn saga enough that he made Ascension on his free own. He took rational pride on his work and wasn't afraid of coming across as a nerd. He even wrote on the readme.txt about the fights and apologised for not being able to make them challenging enough - sentiment which was promptly dismissed by the pre-SHS/G3 modding community as Ascension was hard as fuck. Sure, the romances were there but they were fairly unobtrusive and you could end them easily enough and rest of the writing in BG2/ToB was good for what it is, in the sense that it was tongue-in-cheek D&D Forgotten Realms.

Now compare that Gaider to the current one, who got a toupee (look, I'm not a bald nerd), has gushing fangirls happily guzzling up his literary productions and has even managed to put out a booklet or two. He gets almost constant praise from BioSocial and the only criticism he managed to take on board was that tranny complaining about a tranny joke in DAO. Every other critique on either characters or plot or writing in general is dismissed by the "well, obviously this game isn't for you and if you weren't so stupid, you'd realize it yourself"-line. But that's allrighty since people write fanfiction about his characters and send it off to him!

To a point, you sound like:

 

[Shannow]

You've played Baldur's Gate 2. Do you really feel that there has been a drop in the quality of David Gaider's writing since then, or do you feel he was always the same - be that good or bad?

Anyway, let's remember that it was a total accident that Gaider eventually ended up developing videogames or writing narratives for them. His actual profession was something else, he saw the chance to make a game at some point of time, he took it, and that actually became a permanent part of his life. I don't think he believes himself to be some legendarily great writer; I think he actually knows he is just a man who entered gaming by accident, and stayed there because he enjoys it.

There is no indication that he ever wanted to be a writer before that, so I don't think he believes he is a Rowling.

Nah, not necessarily drop in the quality of writing - that has probably remained the same. But when Gaider started at Bioware, coming from the prestigious profession of hotel manager, he was nerd enough that he cared about a proper "conclusion" to the Bhaalspawn saga enough that he made Ascension on his free own. He took rational pride on his work and wasn't afraid of coming across as a nerd. He even wrote on the readme.txt about the fights and apologised for not being able to make them challenging enough - sentiment which was promptly dismissed by the pre-SHS/G3 modding community as Ascension was hard as fuck. Sure, the romances were there but they were fairly unobtrusive and you could end them easily enough and rest of the writing in BG2/ToB was good for what it is, in the sense that it was tongue-in-cheek D&D Forgotten Realms.

Now compare that Gaider to the current one, who got a toupee (look, I'm not a bald nerd), has gushing fangirls happily guzzling up his literary productions and has even managed to put out a booklet or two. He gets almost constant praise from BioSocial and the only criticism he managed to take on board was that tranny complaining about a tranny joke in DAO. Every other critique on either characters or plot or writing in general is dismissed by the "well, obviously this game isn't for you and if you weren't so stupid, you'd realize it yourself"-line. But that's allrighty since people write fanfiction about his characters and send it off to him!

To a point, you sound like:

Actually Garfunkel was far too verbose to sound like that.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

tldr, codex is shit, news at eleven, here is why

so bro are you saying the codex spends too much time concerned about what and why other people feel about individual game quality particularly modern ones and not discussing games they like
I'd like to believe you were with my post but then again aren't we all like that sometimes

Actually Garfunkel was far too verbose to sound like that.

hyeaah

current gaider seems to actually believe the increased focus on 'character-driven narrative' is part of his natural evolution as a writer and who's to say otherwise with the increased profile of bioware's games

he doesn't have to take your elitist veteran gamer whining there are so many other people he can lend an ear to who wants more of what he's got, actually appreciative gamers who realise how he has grown since the crude days of baldur's gate 2

just like halo created power armor and science fiction people will say david gaider created dark and mature fantasy

ea games presents

a bioware film

The Dragon Age

 

[SCO]

ToB was plot was shit btw. Ascension only makes some fights tougher, it's not a narrative masterpiece.

 

[Wunderpurps]

ToB was plot was shit btw. Ascension only makes some fights tougher, it's not a narrative masterpiece.

I never got how people will say ToB is shit but think icewind dale is the rock.

 

[Infinitron]

hyeaah

current gaider seems to actually believe the increased focus on 'character-driven narrative' is part of his natural evolution as a writer and who's to say otherwise with the increased profile of bioware's games

he doesn't have to take your elitist veteran gamer whining there are so many other people he can lend an ear to who wants more of what he's got, actually appreciative gamers who realise how he has grown since the crude days of baldur's gate 2

just like halo created power armor and science fiction people will say david gaider created dark and mature fantasy

ea games presents

a bioware film

The Dragon Age

Yes, except Bioware's increased profile is nothing compared to what Bethesda has now. And the doctors recently expressed admiration for Bethesda's worldbuilding, which for all of its flaws, doesn't have much of a 'character-driven narrative'.

Will Gaider be taken down a notch sometime in the near future? I guess the success (or lack thereof) of TOR will decide that.

 

[GarfunkeL]

sgc_meltdown managed to condense my meaning and intention into a much shorter paragraph.

 

[Johnny the Mule]

tldr, codex is shit, news at eleven, here is why

so bro are you saying the codex spends too much time concerned about what and why other people feel about individual game quality particularly modern ones and not discussing games they like
I'd like to believe you were with my post but then again aren't we all like that sometimes

no the codex spends to much time feeling 'quality' and far to few moments thinking, essentially reducing gaming to casual larping and then comparing both on even grounds, making any discussion point completely and utterly moot by nature, kinda like threads about dreams and dream analysis
you sir are guilty